Possession or Insanity?: Two Views from the Victorian Lunatic Asylum (original) (raw)

Occult Genres and the Certification of Madness in a 19th-Century Lunatic Asylum

Using archival admissions records and case histories of patients at a British asylum from the 1860s to the 1870s, the authors examine the medical certification process leading to the asylum confinement of individuals judged to be " of unsound mind. " These institutional texts are, the authors suggest, " occult genres " that function as complex acts of argumentation, whose illocutionary force depends on the success of their felicity conditions. Through the lens of Austin's concept of " uptake, " the authors analyze the role of medical certification in the admissions history of two patients at Ticehurst House Asylum in the 1860s-1870s. The authors contend that historical genre analysis plays an important role in the rhetoric of medicine and health, shedding light on the performative power of medical certification, an act essential to the practice of psychiatry.

No "Sane" Person Would Have Any Idea': Patients' Involvement in Late Nineteenth-century British Asylum Psychiatry

Medical history, 2016

In his 1895 textbook, Mental Physiology, Bethlem Royal Hospital physician Theo Hyslop acknowledged the assistance of three fellow hospital residents. One was a junior colleague. The other two were both patients: Walter Abraham Haigh and Henry Francis Harding. Haigh was also thanked in former superintendent George Savage's book Insanity and Allied Neuroses (1884). In neither instance were the patients identified as such. This begs the question: what role did Haigh and Harding play in asylum theory and practice? And how did these two men interpret their experiences, both within and outside the asylum? By focusing on Haigh and Harding's unusual status, this paper argues that the notion of nineteenth-century 'asylum patient' needs to be investigated by paying close attention to specific national and institutional circumstances. Exploring Haigh and Harding's active engagement with their physicians provides insight into this lesser-known aspect of psychiatry's hist...

‘A delirium without fever’: the birth of puerperal insanity

Paper presented at Difficult Women 1680 – 1830, a conference hosted by the Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies, University of York, 27 – 28 November, 2015

Although women and midwives had long been familiar with the violent and erratic behaviours to which women could be prone during pregnancy and following childbirth, the area received little attention from the rising medical establishment until, late in the eighteenth century, references to insanity due to ‘puerperal causes’ began to creep into the medical literature. Physician-accoucheur (man-midwife) Thomas Denman was perhaps the first to examine the condition in any detail, referring in 1807 to ‘that aberration of the mental faculties’ which women are subject to following childbirth, noting that ‘all women soon after delivery are either more irritated, or more subject to irritation, than they perhaps are at any other time.’ In late 1819, in a paper delivered to the College of Physicians, British obstetrician Robert Gooch first outlined the condition ‘puerperal insanity.’ This paper will examine the early instances of the puerperal insanity diagnosis at one Scottish institution, Dundee Lunatic Asylum, from the opening ofthe asylum in 1820 until 1830 when the diagnosishad become established there, considering the rise of the diagnosis in a very specific and local setting in order tocontribute to our understanding at a wider level.The asylum was one of eight charitable asylums founded and built in Scotland by public subscription between 1782 and 1839, and catered for both pauper and private patients. Through detailed examination of establishment register and patient case notes, the paper will outline the cases of women admitted to the asylum following childbirth, and will consider how the physicians at this asylum began to use the puerperal insanity diagnosis to rationalise the difficult behaviours of women in this most joyous period of their lives.

The treatment of madness in Spain in the second half of the 19th century: conceptual aspects

History of Psychiatry, 2006

This paper deals with the conceptual principles which governed the treatment of madness in Spain during the nineteenth century. Against the general view that treatments were targeted to diseases, we argue that clinicians were more syndrome-oriented than disease-oriented in their treatments. Mental syndromes were classified into groups according to the different treatments that were thought to be useful. We also describe the conceptual basis of moral treatment and study the correlation between somatic and mental disease in relation to treatment.