Somatic school

The somatic school was a group of nineteenth century German psychiatrists, including Carl Jacobi, Christian Friedrich Nasse and Carl Friedrich Flemming, who taught that insanity is a symptom of biological diseases located outside the brain, particularly diseases of the abdominal and thoracic viscera, akin to the delirium caused by many acute biological illnesses. Their approach differed from that of the physiological school, represented by Wilhelm Roser, Wilhelm Griesinger, Carl Wunderlich, who insisted on there being a brain lesion underlying all insanity, even if, in some instances that lesion was the result of an earlier, extra-cerebral biological illness.