Were early psychiatric diseases essences?
The paper traces Christian Wolff’s logic into Boissier de Sauvages’ nosology and shows William Cullen also individuated disease species by a single essential cause.
Source
The essentialism of early modern psychiatric nosology
What they did
It reads Sauvages’ botanical hierarchy of mental disorders and Cullen’s proximate-cause method against present debates on natural kinds and the DSM.
What they found
Eighteenth-century physicians lacked a live non-essentialist option. Sauvages mixed brain defects with moral vice. Cullen explained many symptoms by one essence. Historians had underplayed logic and metaphysics.
The limits
What it doesn't show
This is intellectual history of two nosologists, not a defence of essentialism for today’s DSM. It does not reclassify living patients.
Key terms
- Essentialism
- The view that a disease species picks out an essence, often a single defining cause.
- Sauvages
- Montpellier nosologist whose Nosologie méthodique (1731–) classified diseases on botanical lines.
- William Cullen
- Edinburgh nosologist who individuated species by proximate cause, including in psychiatric disorders.
- Wolff
- Christian Wolff, whose logic, definitions, and science ideal shaped Sauvages.
Flashcards
Research intelligence for this paper
See its role on concept claims, tensions it is part of, placement history, and related discoveries.
Quiz yourself
Sauvages’ nosology was shaped by?
Common questions
Why Wolff?
His logic and metaphysics shaped Sauvages’ method, disorder concepts, and classification.
Was Cullen different?
More continuity than recognised: he too sought a single essential cause.
Botany?
Sauvages ranked mental disorders like plants: orders, genera, species, often with causes in the names.
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