A curious piece of psychiatric history built around the rediscovery of an almost forgotten nineteenth-century text.

First issued in 1892 as Depression: What It Is and How to Cure It, A. E. Bridger’s monograph sits in an odd little moment, published after the older humoral language of melancholy, but before twentieth-century psychiatry had settled into its modern categories. Bridgers work suggests depression as something deeply entangled with bodily processes, particularly digestion and other forms of physiological disturbance, while also describing its recurring mental course with striking specificity.

This 1988 publication places Bridger’s original text in historical context through an introductory study by medical historian M. J. van Lieburg, then reproduces the monograph itself in facsimile. The treatments are dated, certainly, they range from dietary regulation to mercury compounds and electricity — but it's fascinating to almost watch a medical category being assembled in real time. Depression here is a contested mixture of physiology, temperament, fear, bodily dysfunction and what Bridger calls the recurring “stages” of despondency. A very odd and almost tangible document from the prehistory of modern psychiatric language.

Edition / condition: Organon International bv, 1988. First edition. Hardcover with dust jacket. Includes M. J. van Lieburg’s historical introduction and a facsimile reproduction of A. E. Bridger’s 1892 monograph Depression: What It Is and How to Cure It. Light shelf wear and handling to dust jacket; internally clean and unmarked. Very good condition.