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Debora de Fazio
We present the results of a research on the language of psychiatry in Italy between the nineteenth century and the twentieth century. In it, we describe the origins of the terminology of this branch of medicine and the network of synonyms, hypernyms and hyponyms which were used to describe mental illness in the beginnings of modern psychiatry. Furthermore, we give an overview on the names of the psychiatric hospitals and of the asylums, as well as on the description and the names of the instruments used in the observation or in the treatment of mental illness. What emerges from the study is a rich and differentiated terminology, part of a terminological framework in which the international language of science still predominant at the time, the French, plays a leading role, accompanied in psychiatric ambit by German and English.
