Carl Friedrich Flemming

Life & Legacy

Carl Friedrich Flemming (27 December 1799 – 27 January 1880) was a German psychiatrist born in Jüterbog. He was the father of cellular biologist Walther Flemming (1843-1905).
After receiving his medical doctorate from Berlin, he worked as an assistant at the Irrenheilanstalt Sonnenschein (Sonnenschein mental asylum) near Pirna. From 1830 to 1854 he was director of the new psychiatric hospital at Sachsenberg, and afterwards maintained a private practice in Schwerin.
In 1844 he introduced the term dysthymia mutabilis to describe a disorder that is an alternation of dysthymia atra (black depression) and dysthymia candida (low-level mania). He was part of the somatic school who held 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.

Flemming died in Wiesbaden.