What’s In a Name?

Woman Suffering From Acute Melancholia, 1869, courtesy Wellcome Library, London

Alienists categorized the various psychiatric problems they saw, just as psychiatrists do today. Some terms can be understood fairly easily by the modern researcher; melancholia meant depression, for instance. Other terms are not quite so readily translated or understood today. Here are a few diagnoses for the patients at Canton Asylum for Insane Indians:

Omudis (Chippewa) – imbecility, demented, “mischeivous” (original spelling)

Red Cloud (Sioux) – dementia praecox (this is known today as schizophrenia)

Cleto Tafoya (Pueblo) – dementia praecox, paranoid type, and dazed religious spells

BlueSky (Chippewa) – circular insanity

Fred Tatsup (Bannock) – galloping paresis (paresis is a partial paralysis due to syphilis; “galloping” means a rapid progression of the condition)