[History of psychiatric facilities in the Silesian region in the 19th century].

A historiographic paper in which the authors--psychiatrists--deal, based on research in archives, with the period preceding by approximately 100 years the opening of the psychiatric sanatorium in Opava. The beginnings of institutional care of the mentally sick in the Silesion region were in 1841 and were associated with the construction of an "asylum" on the grounds of the newly built hospital in Opava, a small house for 20-24 patients kept under inhuman conditions. An advance was the provisional arrangement involving the lease of a castle in Albrechtice for 36 and finally 90 patients in 1873. The regulations of the institute and rules of behaviour of the keepers were already on an advanced level of psychiatric in-patients care. The concept of the Opava sanatorium was according to documents in the archives elaborated by the 51-year-old Dr. Franz Köstl, one of the founders of Prague psychiatric institutions. His project has been preserved. The Opava sanatorium was opened and work started on March 29, 1889.