That men should put an enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains: Reconsidering the origins of model psychosis.

The promises of the Prozac century have fallen short; the number of novel, therapeutically significant medications successfully completing development shrinks every year; and the demand for better treatments constantly grows. Answering these hardships is a renewed optimism concerning the efficacy of controlled psychedelic therapy, a that has seen the resurgence of a familiar concept: intoxication as model psychosis. And yet, little has been made of where this peculiar idea originates.

Cortical localization and the nerve cell: Freud's work in Meynert's psychiatry clinic.

Sigmund Freud's pioneering early work on individuated nerve cells, later termed "neurons," has long been recognized by the history of psychology. Yet, relatively little has been written about the influence of Freud's then mentor, Theodor Meynert, on Freud's 1884-1885 neuroanatomical research, or the monumental conceptual shift embodied in the project itself. Focusing on Freud's 1884 "Die Struktur der Elemente des Nervensytems" (The Structure of the Elements of the Nervous System) as his first true effort to describe individuated nerve cells, this article identifies Meynert as highly influential on Freud's turn to representative schema, further suggesting that Freud's brief foray in clinical neurology at Meynert's clinic aligns with Freud's move from the laboratory to the mind.

"A new order of poisonous substances": revisiting Robert M. Glover's dissertation on the physiological effects of bromine, chlorine, and iodine compounds.

Robert Mortimer Glover's contribution as the first to identify the anaesthetic effects of chloroform went unrecognized for over 130 years. Posterity now remembers Glover as the first to experimentally demonstrate the effects of chloroform, and yet, the scope and impact of the work for which he is remembered remains largely undiscussed. This historical article returns to Glover's dissertation, for which he won the Harveian Prize in 1842, and examines its experimental findings in their historical context.

Were the scale of excitability a circle: Tracing the roots of the disease theory of alcoholism through Brunonian stimulus dependence.

The disease theory of alcoholism, and by extension, of addiction, forms the theoretical basis of an expansive scientific industry, one which musters tremendous resources in the service of research, rehab clinics, and government programs. Revisiting the early work on the disease theory of alcoholism, this paper analyzes the apperance of the disease theory of alcoholism in the eighteenth/nineteenth century works of Rush, Trotter, and Brühl-Cramer as emergent of a theoretical tension within the Brunonian system of medicine, that of stimulus dependence. Establishing both the shared Brunonianism of these figures and the concept of stimulus dependence, I argue it is here that one finds the nascent formulation of the modern dependence model of addiction, pushing out alternative models, such as Hufeland's toxin theory.

Kant, intoxicated: the aesthetics of drunkenness, between moral duty and "active play".

This article examines Kant's overlooked concept of "active play," as opposed to "free play," in connection with the influence of the Brunonian system of medicine, both of which, I propose, are central to understanding the broader significance of intoxication in Kant's post-1795 work. Beginning with a discussion of the late-18th century German reception of Brunonian theory, the idea of vital stimulus, and their importance for Kant, I assess the distinction drawn between gluttony and intoxication in The Metaphysics of Morals and Anthropology from a Practical Point of View. Both are analysed in the context of the Brunonian system of medicine, having establishing Kant's commitment to the Brunonianism system, as corroborated by Wasianski.

A portrait of the neurophysiologist as a young man: Claus, Darwin, and Sigmund Freud's search for the testes of the eel (1875-1877).

In 1878, Sigmund Freud produced his first scientific publication while a medical student in Vienna, a physiological and histological analysis of Szymon Syrski's claim to have discovered the long-sought testes of the European eel. Though he would eventually come to be known as the father of psychoanalysis, a closer look at Freud's earliest scientific publication demonstrates that he was initially positioned on the cutting edge of neo-mechanistic physiology, and academic Darwinism. Not only was the young Freud a methodologically capable physiologist, he was conceptually grounded by the anti-Lamarckian and anti-Haeckelian Darwinism of his first mentor, Carl Claus.