Ludwik Perzyna: contemporary references to his psychiatric knowledge

Ludwik Perzyna (1742-1800) was one of the most prominent representatives of Polish medicine in the second part of the 18th century. He obtained theoretical knowledge and proficiency in surgery by participating as a physician in military operations in the eastern part of Poland in the 1770s. It is also known that in 1794, he treated injured soldiers fighting in the Kościuszko Uprising. He owed his enormous erudition, practically in all fields of medicine, to the extraordinary power of observation, assimilation of information given by leading contemporary physicians, and intensive diagnostic and therapeutic practice. His rich literary legacy includes numerous medical books covering most fields of medicine in which he conveys his great knowledge and popularizes medical education. Ludwik Perzyna had amazing literary and linguistic talent. His Polish language was correct and affluent, he proposed many Polish equivalents of Latin medical terms and can be regarded as a co-creator of the Polish medical terminology. In his book Lekarz dla włościan (A physician for people) published in Kalisz in 1793, one chapter is devoted to mental disturbances. He made a description of the symptoms, course, and treatment of various mental diseases, creating Polish names for some of them, and became a Polish pioneer in this respect. In the article, a detailed discussion of this chapter is presented. Some statements and observations are astonishing for their accuracy and originality, and also in terms of the further development of psychiatric science. In the paper, attention is focused on those which may refer to contemporary psychiatry.