APA Historical Database: Selected Entries

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On May 19:

1487 — Heinrich Kramer and Johann Sprenger's Malleus Maleficarum (The Witch Hammer), the Inquisition's guide to the diagnosis, behavior, trial, and punishment of witches, was endorsed by the Faculty of Theology at the University of Cologne. The Malleus went through 19 editions in the next 2 centuries and provided a basis for gruesome tortures of people with deviant behavior.

1762 — Johann Fichte was born. Fichte, a follower of Kant, asserted that concepts of time and space were innate.

1788 — Pursuant to a 1785 decree by the Grand Duke Peter Leopold, about 120 mentally ill patients were moved into the Hospital of Bonifazio, in Tuscany, Italy. The patients were subjects of the first public ordinance providing for care of the mentally ill (1774) and were under the supervision of hospital director Vincenzo Chiarugi. Chiarugi instituted some of the world's first humane standards of care of mentally ill people.

1851 — Standards of the "Kirkbride plan" for the construction of mental hospitals were adopted by the American Psychiatric Association. Among the provisions was the recommendation that there should be no more than 250 patients housed in each building.

1869 — James Crichton Browne sent the first of many photos of people with mental illness to Charles Darwin. Browne was a psychiatrist and amateur photographer whose photos provided evidence used by Darwin in his book The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals (1872).

1965 — Noam Chomsky's book Aspects of the Theory of Syntax was published. The book promoted a nativistic view of thought and language.

1966 — Frances K. Graham and Rachel K. Clifton's article "Heart-Rate Change as a Component of the Orienting Response" was published in Psychological Bulletin. The article was later featured as a "citation classic" by Current Contents.

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