Kraepelin

When German psychiatrists Alois Alzheimer and Emil Kraepelin classified it as a disease in the early 20th century, they focused on younger patients.

As inmate populations rose, Emil Kraepelin and other European scientists sought to trace insanity to its biological roots.

At the same time, Harrington shows, the German psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin began a large-scale, systematic survey to categorize symptoms such as hallucinations or extreme moods.

Kandel’s chief aim is to explore “how the processes of the brain that give rise to our mind can become disordered, resulting in devastating diseases that haunt humankind,” and he declares at the outset his intention to weave Kraepelin’s story throughout.

Here the author again parallels Kraepelin, who stressed the contribution of heritable “degeneracy” to mental disorders.