[Psychiatry in 19th century Cracow (1820-1880)]

This paper contains information about Cracovian mental clinics treating mentally ill people, about the people treated in the psychiatric wards and their doctors in the years 1820-1880. Psychiatric institutions changed gradually - initially, the ill were placed and treated in an old medieval building, previously serving as a monastery, and in the final period, in a newly built complex originally intended for a psychiatric ward. Gradually,the specialization of psychiatrist was developed - it was to be a medical specialist dealing above all with mentally ill patients. The community of Cracovian psychiatrists contributed a lot to the development of specialist Polish terminology describing mental disorders. I have presented some important papers devoted to the aspects of psychiatry written by doctors directly dealing with the mentally ill and also by the doctors of different specialisations, mainly from the field of forensic medicine. In the years discussed, there were attempts to put psychiatry on a par with different fields of medicine by means of changing the conditions of treating the ill and introducing lectures on psychiatry in the Medicine Faculty of the Jagiellonian University.