Christian Friedrich Nasse

Who was Christian Friedrich Nasse?

Christian Friedrich Nasse was a German physician and psychiatrist born in Bielefeld.

He studied medicine at the University of Halle under physiologist Johann Christian Reil. At Halle, Achim von Arnim and Friedrich von Raumer were among his friends. Following graduation returned to Bielefeld as a general practitioner, later serving as director of a hospital for the poor. From 1819 until his death in 1851, he worked as a professor at the University of Bonn.

Nasse was a member of the somatic school of psychiatry that was popular during the first half of the 19th century in Germany. He believed that diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders depended on investigation of the somatic activity of a patient, formulating his belief system on the basis that physical disease produced a disturbance in the relationship between the psyche and the soma. He was interested in the works of Johann Friedrich Herbart, and skeptical of natural philosophers. Nasse is credited for introducing the practical experience of "bedside diagnosis" into the university lecture hall. Nasse died on his birthday, aged 73 in Marburg.