It was at St. Elizabeth’s that his hitherto puzzling illness was given what might be regarded as its first modern, currently recognizable description. On November 8, 1918, his attending psychiatrist, a Doctor Davidian, formally declared that William Minor, federal patient number 18487, was suffering from what was to be called “dementia praecox, of the paranoid form.” No longer was the vague word monomania to be used, nor would simple paranoia do.
