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Magnus Huss
(22 Oct 1807 - 22 Apr 1890)
Swedish physician who coined the word alcoholism and was the first to define it as a chronic, relapsing disease. (Some risks related to alcohol consumption had been mentioned earlier in lectures by Carl von Linné in the 18th century.)
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Science Quotes by Magnus Huss (2 quotes)
The name chronic alcoholism applies to the collective symptoms of a disordered condition of the mental, motor, and sensory functions of the nervous system, these symptoms assuming a chronic form, and without their being immediately connected with any of those (organic) modifications of the central or peripheric portions of the nervous system which may be detected during life, or discovered after death by ocular inspection; such symptoms, moreover, affecting individuals who have persisted for a considerable length of time in the abuse of alcoholic liquors.
— Magnus Huss
Published in Swedish in 1849. Translation quoted in William Marcet On Chronic Alcoholic Intoxication (1868), 21.
These symptoms are formed in such a particular way that they form a disease group in themselves and thus merit being designated and described as a definite disease ... It is this group of symptoms which I wish to designate by the name Alcoholismus chronicus.
— Magnus Huss
Alcoholismus chronicus: Chronisk alcoholisjudkom: Ett bidrag till dyskrasiarnas känndom (1849). Trans. quoted in John William Crowley, William L. White, Drunkard's Refuge (2004), 5.
See also:
- 22 Oct - short biography, births, deaths and events on date of Huss's birth.
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
