Abstract
Information on patients left by a nurse in a large British asylum in 1823 has suggested that the occurrence of schizophrenic symptoms in asylums was not uncommon at that time. This paper presents another nurse's report, this time an unpublished notebook from North America in the 1790s, indicating that schizophrenic symptomatology was rare during this period. The two nurses' accounts differ significantly, the one before 1800 reporting little schizophrenic symptomatology, and the one after reporting much. Nurses' accounts of phenomenology of this period adds evidence to the notion that schizophrenic symptoms were rare before 1800 and common afterwards.
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