A Brief History of Psychiatry
This is an arbitrary bird’s eye view that omits the many valuable but too numerous contributors that have made the present day science and practice of psychiatry possible.
Galen
124 BCE
In Rome the physician Galen, adopted a single symptom approach rather than broad diagnostic categories, for example studying separate states of sadness, excitement, confusion and memory loss. Galen extended these ideas and developed a powerful and influential school of thought within the biological tradition that extended well into the 18th century.