Franz Köstl, the first-ever professor of psychiatry in Prague (on ocassion of the 200th birth anniversary)
Abstract
Franz Köstl was born 200 years ago on Mar 28, 1811 in Cerklje (Zirklach) in Carniola; graduated from the University of Padova (1835); worked as physician in the northern Italy (1835-1843), intern at the lunatic asylum of Vienna (1844), senior consultant at that of Graz (1845, habilitated 1847) and director of that of Prague - the largest and most advanced one in the Austrian Empire (1852); pioneered a concept of nation-wide action against endemic cretinism (1855); investigated the influence of variola fever on progressive paralysis (1856) - a pioneer of pyretotherapy in psychiatry; extended capacity of the Prague lunatic asylum by adaptation of a former Servite monastery for work therapy (1860); the first-ever professor of psychiatry at the Charles-Ferdinand University in Prague (1864); pensioned due to administration mistakes (1869) but gave lectures until 1871; interim director of the lunatic asylum of Graz (1872); retired (1873); died on Dec 7, 1882 in Graz. Some hitherto unknown data found in archives are presented here to fill up gaps in biography of his wife Theresia, a painter, and to reveal consanguinity of the Lippich, Czermak, and Cori families of illustrious scientists, what Köstl had based by taking along the orphaned family of his brother-in-law to Prague