Carl Georg Lange (4 December 1834 – 29 May 1900) was a

Danish Danish may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to the country of Denmark People * A national or citizen of Denmark, also called a "Dane," see Demographics of Denmark * Culture of Denmark * Danish people or Danes, people with a Danish a ...

physician A physician (American English), medical practitioner (Commonwealth English), medical doctor, or simply doctor, is a health professional who practices medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring health through th ...

who made contributions to the fields of

neurology Neurology (from el, wikt:νεῦρον, νεῦρον (neûron), "string, nerve" and the suffix wikt:-logia, -logia, "study of") is the branch of specialty (medicine), medicine dealing with the diagnosis and treatment of all categories of co ...

psychiatry Psychiatry is the medical specialty devoted to the diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of mental disorders. These include various maladaptations related to mood, behaviour, cognition, and perceptions. See glossary of psychiatry. Initial psych ...

, and

psychology Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries betwe ...

. Born to a wealthy family in

Vordingborg Vordingborg () is an old ferry town in Vordingborg Municipality in Denmark with around 18,000 inhabitants. Because of three large estates surrounding the town, a coherent urban development has not been possible, which is the reason why three sat ...

, Denmark, Lange attended medical school at the

University of Copenhagen The University of Copenhagen ( da, Københavns Universitet, KU) is a prestigious public university, public research university in Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark. Founded in 1479, the University of Copenhagen is the second-oldest university in ...

and graduated in 1859 with a reputation for brilliance. After publishing on the neurological pathologies of

aphasia Aphasia is an inability to comprehend or formulate language because of damage to specific brain regions. The major causes are stroke and head trauma; prevalence is hard to determine but aphasia due to stroke is estimated to be 0.1–0.4% in th ...

bulbar palsy Bulbar palsy refers to a range of different signs and symptoms linked to impairment of function of the glossopharyngeal nerve (CN IX), the vagus nerve (CN X), the accessory nerve (CN XI), and the hypoglossal nerve (CN XII). It is caused by a low ...

tabes dorsalis Tabes dorsalis is a late consequence of neurosyphilis, characterized by the slow degeneration (specifically, demyelination) of the neural tracts primarily in the dorsal root ganglia of the spinal cord (nerve root). These patients have lancinating n ...

, and pathologies of the

spinal cord The spinal cord is a long, thin, tubular structure made up of nervous tissue, which extends from the medulla oblongata in the brainstem to the lumbar region of the vertebral column (backbone). The backbone encloses the central canal of the spi ...

, he achieved world fame with his 1885 work "On Emotions: A Psycho-Physiological Study". In it, he posited that all

emotion Emotions are mental states brought on by neurophysiological changes, variously associated with thoughts, feelings, behavioral responses, and a degree of pleasure or displeasure. There is currently no scientific consensus on a definition. ...

s are developed from, and can be reduced to, physiological reactions to stimuli. Seemingly independently, the American

William James William James (January 11, 1842 – August 26, 1910) was an American philosopher, historian, and psychologist, and the first educator to offer a psychology course in the United States. James is considered to be a leading thinker of the lat ...

had published a similar work the year before, but unlike James, Lange specifically stated that vasomotor changes ''are'' emotions. The theory became known as the James–Lange theory of emotion. In 1886 Lange published "On Periodical Depressions and their Pathogenesis," an exposé on the previously undescribed illness of periodic depressions without mania known today as

major depressive disorder Major depressive disorder (MDD), also known as clinical depression, is a mental disorder characterized by at least two weeks of pervasive low mood, low self-esteem, and loss of interest or pleasure in normally enjoyable activities. Introdu ...

. He asserted that the disease was extremely common in his practice. Based on observations he made of his patients' urine, he hypothesized that the illness was related to an excess of

uric acid Uric acid is a heterocyclic compound of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and hydrogen with the formula C5H4N4O3. It forms ions and salts known as urates and acid urates, such as ammonium acid urate. Uric acid is a product of the metabolic breakdown of ...

in the blood and advocated for methods of reducing this substance, including the use of

lithium Lithium (from el, λίθος, lithos, lit=stone) is a chemical element with the symbol Li and atomic number 3. It is a soft, silvery-white alkali metal. Under standard conditions, it is the least dense metal and the least dense solid el ...

. His recommendations were discarded by the psychiatric community, as was his

nosological Nosology () is the branch of medical science that deals with the classification of diseases. Fully classifying a medical condition requires knowing its cause (and that there is only one cause), the effects it has on the body, the symptoms that ...

assertions of the uniqueness of the disease. Lithium was later found in 1949 to be an effective treatment for mood disorders, although the concept of a uric acid diathesis was fully discredited. But a connection of uric acid and depression is not without possibility. He died in Copenhagen in 1900 at the age of 65.

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