Burghölzli, The University Psychiatric Clinic of Zurich

   (1870 and after)

   In 1863, Wilhelm Griesinger, who had come to Zurich in 1860 as professor of medicine and director of the university medical clinic, organized in the old city asylum a "psychiatric clinic" and began lecturing to the medical students. Appointed director of the asylum, he left for Berlin 2 years later. In 1869, psychiatry teaching in Zurich was elevated to a professorship, the chair holder simultaneously being head of the new university hospital ("clinic"), which was erected in 1870 and called the "Burghölzli" (known as the "Bli").

   Among Griesinger’s successors were a number of well-known psychiatrists. Between 1869 and 1872, Bernhard von Gudden (1824–1886), who pioneered research in neuroanatomy and physiology, occupied the chair. He drowned together with his patient, the mentally ill King Ludwig II of Bavaria (1845–1886), in Lake Starnberg near Munich under tenebrous circumstances. In the brief period 1873–1874, Gustav Huguenin (1838–1907) was the chair holder, succeeded in 1875–1879 by Eduard Hitzig (1838– 1907). Between 1879 and 1898, Auguste Forel (1848–1931) was professor of psychiatry; and in the years 1898–1927, Eugen Bleuler (1857–1939) held the chair and left one of the greatest marks of anyone upon the discipline of psychiatry. Bleuler was followed by Hans Wolfgang Maier (1882–1945) in the years 1927–1941, after which in the period 1942–1969, Eugen Bleuler’s son Manfred (1903–1994) became the professor of psychiatry. Manfred Bleuler was known for research on psychopathology and— stimulated by his year of study in 1929 in Boston under Stanley Cobb (1887–1968) where he saw some of neurosurgeon Harvey Cushing’s (1869–1939) patients with pituitary tumors—on the endocrinological aspects of schizophrenia. Manfred Bleuler’s book Endocrinological Psychiatry (Endokrinologische Psychiatrie) was published in 1954. Bleuler was also known for his work on long-term outcomes in schizophrenia, many of which turned out to be surprisingly positive: Die schizophrenen Geistessörungen im Lichte langjähriger Kranken- und Familiengeschichten (1972) (translated into English in 1978 as The Schizophrenic Disorders: Long-term Patient and Family Studies). After Bleuler, the clinic was divided.