Researching Carl Lange

Born to a wealthy family in Vordingborg, Denmark, Lange attended medical school at the University of Copenhagen and graduated in 1859 with a reputation for brilliance. After publishing on the neurological pathologies of aphasia, bulbar palsy, tabes dorsalis, and pathologies of the spinal cord, he achieved world fame with his 1885 work "On Emotions: A Psycho-Physiological Study". In it, he posited that all emotions are developed from, and can be reduced to, physiological reactions to stimuli. Seemingly independently, the American William James had published a similar work the year before, but unlike James, Lange specifically stated that vasomotor changes are emotions. The theory became known as the James–Lange theory of emotion.

In 1886 Lange published "On Periodical Depressions and their Pathogenesis," an exposé on the previously undescribed illness of periodic depressions without mania known today as major depressive disorder. He asserted that the disease was extremely common in his practice. Based on observations he made of his patients' urine, he hypothesized that the illness was related to an excess of uric acid in the blood and advocated for methods of reducing this substance, including the use of lithium. His recommendations were discarded by the psychiatric community, as was his nosological assertions of the uniqueness of the disease. Lithium was later found in 1949 to be an effective treatment for mood disorders, although the concept of a uric acid diathesis was fully discredited.

But a connection of uric acid and depression is not without possibility.

He died in Copenhagen in 1900 at the age of 65.

He was born in Kristiania as a son of Christian Lous Lange (1869–1938) and Bertha Manthey (1867–1947), and brother of August and Halvard Manthey Lange. He enrolled as a student in 1922, and graduated with the cand.med. degree in 1929. While studying he was a member of Mot Dag, where he organized study circles for both members and non-members, and contributed to the periodical Populært Tidsskrift for Seksuell Oplysning. He was the chairman of the Norwegian Students' Society in 1933, and of the Student Society in Trondheim in 1939.

Lange worked as a physician in Oslo from 1930, and then in Trondheim from 1934 to 1946. The exception was the period from 1942 to 1945, when he was imprisoned at Falstad concentration camp by the Nazi occupants of Norway. He was acting stadsfysikus from 1946 to 1947, and also health inspector in Trondheim from 1946 to 1955. He became involved in politics, and was a member of Trondheim city council from 1945 to 1955, from 1945 to 1950 and 1954 to 1955 as a member of the executive committee. He was elected to the Parliament of Norway from the Market towns of Sør-Trøndelag and Nord-Trøndelag counties in 1949, where he was a member of the Standing Committee on Social Affairs. He was not re-elected in 1953, but served as a deputy representative during the term 1950–1953.

From 1955 to 1964 he was district physician in Oddernes, and from 1964 to his retirement in 1974 he was a county physician in Vest-Agder. When he applied for the post in Vest-Agder, the Norwegian Directorate for Health led by Karl Evang suggested that another candidate be hired. However, Minister of Health Olav Gjærevoll overturned the recommendation and gave Lange the position. This was criticized as a "politicized" appointment.

Lange was board chairman of the Norwegian People's Aid chapter in Trondheim from 1939 to 1946, board member of Trøndelag Teater from 1946 to 1949 and of the Norwegian Medical Association from 1948 to 1949. He died in May 1999.