Joseph Guislain (

Ghent Ghent ( nl, Gent ; french: Gand ; traditional English: Gaunt) is a city and a municipality in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It is the capital and largest city of the East Flanders province, and the third largest in the country, exceeded in ...

, 2 February 1797 – Ghent, 1 April 1860) was a

Belgian Belgian may refer to: * Something of, or related to, Belgium * Belgians, people from Belgium or of Belgian descent * Languages of Belgium, languages spoken in Belgium, such as Dutch, French, and German *Ancient Belgian language, an extinct languag ...

physician and a pioneer in

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 ...

Education

Guislain started his medical studies at Ecole de Médicine and he was one of the first students to the

University of Ghent Ghent University ( nl, Universiteit Gent, abbreviated as UGent) is a public research university located in Ghent, Belgium. Established before the state of Belgium itself, the university was founded by the Dutch King William I in 1817, when the ...

; he graduated as a medical doctor in 1819.

Career

In 1828 Guislain became head of the psychiatric hospitals of Ghent, for which he wrote a new internal regulation together with Petrus Josef Triest. It was the first of its type and stipulated how to handle the patients in a decent and therapeutically justified way. In 1850, together with Edouard Ducpétiaux, he was at the basis of the law on psychiatric care, which would remain the framework for psychiatric care in Belgium until 1991. Joseph Guislain published his ''Traité sur les phrénopathies'' in 1833, in which he proposed a new form of psychiatric classification. He argued that although mental illnesses could take many forms they were all derived from the same single disease process. This gave rise to the psychiatric doctrine of

unitary psychosis Unitary psychosis (''Einheitspsychose'') refers to the 19th-century belief prevalent in German psychiatry until the era of Emil Kraepelin that all forms of psychosis were surface variations of a single underlying disease process. According to this ...

which was highly influential in German psychiatry from the mid-nineteenth century. In his three-volume work ''Leçons orales sur les phrénopathies'' of 1852 he further expanded his vision on mental illness. In 1835, he was appointed as professor in

physiology Physiology (; ) is the scientific study of functions and mechanisms in a living system. As a sub-discipline of biology, physiology focuses on how organisms, organ systems, individual organs, cells, and biomolecules carry out the chemical ...

at the University of Ghent. In 1848, he became a member of the governing board of the new moderate Liberal Association, put himself up as a candidate for the municipality Council elections and was elected. Three years later he was re-elected for a second period of three years, but in 1854 he made an end to his political career. In 1852, the municipality Council of Ghent accepted his plans for a new psychiatric hospital and in 1857 the Guislain Institute was inaugurated. After he died on 1 April 1860 in Ghent he was interred at the Campo Sancto in Sint Amandsberg. In 1887, a statue for him was inaugurated at the Begijnhoflaan in Ghent. File:MuseumDrGuislain 7-10-2009 14-03-59.jpg, File:Gent Bloemekenswijk 005 Guislain.JPG, File:Dr Joseph Guislain buste.jpg,

References

Sources

Joseph Guislain
(Liberal Archive)

External links

Museum Dr. Guislain

Some places and memories related to Joseph Guislain

P.C. Dr. Guislain psychiatric hospital
{{DEFAULTSORT:Guislain, Joseph 1797 births 1860 deaths Belgian psychiatrists Ghent University alumni