<P> Accounts of a schizophrenia - like syndrome are thought to be rare in the historical record prior to the 19th century, although reports of irrational, unintelligible, or uncontrolled behavior were common . There has been an interpretation that brief notes in the Ancient Egyptian Ebers papyrus may imply schizophrenia, but other reviews have not suggested any connection . A review of ancient Greek and Roman literature indicated that although psychosis was described, there was no account of a condition meeting the criteria for schizophrenia . </P> <P> Bizarre psychotic beliefs and behaviors similar to some of the symptoms of schizophrenia were reported in Arabic medical and psychological literature during the Middle Ages . In The Canon of Medicine, for example, Avicenna described a condition somewhat resembling the symptoms of schizophrenia which he called Junun Mufrit (severe madness), which he distinguished from other forms of madness (Junun) such as mania, rabies and manic depressive psychosis . However, no condition resembling schizophrenia was reported in Şerafeddin Sabuncuoğlu's Imperial Surgery, a major Ottoman medical textbook of the 15th century . Given limited historical evidence, schizophrenia (as prevalent as it is today) may be a modern phenomenon, or alternatively it may have been obscured in historical writings by related concepts such as melancholia or mania . </P> <P> A detailed case 1809 report by John Haslam concerning James Tilly Matthews, and a separate account by Philippe Pinel also published in 1809, are often regarded as the earliest cases of schizophrenia in the medical and psychiatric literature . The Latinized term dementia praecox entered psychiatry in 1886 in a textbook by asylum physician Heinrich Schüle (1840 - 1916) of the Illenau asylum in Baden . He used the term to refer to hereditarily predisposed individuals who were "wrecked on the cliffs of puberty" and developed acute dementia, while others developed the chronic condition of hebephrenia . Emil Kraepelin had cited Schüle's 1886 textbook in the 1887 second edition of his own textbook, Psychiatrie, and hence was familiar with this term at least six years before he himself adopted it . It later appeared in 1891 in a case report by Arnold Pick which argued that hebephrenia should be regarded as a form of dementia praecox . Kraepelin first used the term in 1893 . In 1899 Emil Kraepelin introduced a broad new distinction in the classification of mental disorders between dementia praecox and mood disorder (termed manic depression and including both unipolar and bipolar depression). Kraepelin believed that dementia praecox was caused by a lifelong, smoldering systemic or "whole body" process of a metabolic nature that would eventually affect the functioning of the brain in a final decisive cascade . Hence, he believed the entire body--all the organs, glands and peripheral nervous system--was implicated in the natural disease process . Although he used the term "dementia," Kraepelin seemed to use the term synonymously with "mental weakness," mental defect," and "mental deterioration," but distinguished it from other uses of the term dementia, such as in Alzheimer's disease, which typically occur later in life . In 1853 Bénédict Morel used the term démence précoce (precocious or early dementia) to describe a group of young patients who were suffering from "stupor". It is sometimes argued that this first use of the term signals the medical discovery of schizophrenia . However, Morel employed the phrase in a purely descriptive sense and he did not intend to delineate a new diagnostic category . Moreover, his traditional conception of dementia differed significantly from that employed in the latter half of the nineteenth - century . Finally, there is no evidence that Morel's démence précoce had any influence on the later development of the dementia praecox concept by either Arnold Pick or Emil Kraepelin . </P> <P> Kraepelin's classification slowly gained acceptance . There were objections to the use of the term "dementia" despite cases of recovery, and some defence of diagnoses it replaced such as adolescent insanity . The concept of adolescent insanity or developmental insanity had been advanced by Scottish psychiatrist Sir Thomas Clouston in 1873, describing a psychotic condition which generally afflicted those aged 18--24 years, particularly males, and in 30% of cases proceeded to' a secondary dementia' . </P>

When was the first case of schizophrenia discovered