Through an examination of the lives and careers of a series of 19th-century "mad-doctors", this book provides a perspective on the creation of the modern profession of psychiatry, taking readers from the secret and shady practice of the trade in lunacy, through the utopian expectations that were aroused by the lunacy reform movement, to the dismal realities of the barracks-asylums, those Victorian museums of madness within which most 19th-century alienists found themselves compelled to practice. Across a century that spans the period from an unreformed Bedlam to the construction of a post-Darwinian bio-psychiatry centered on the new Maudsley Hospital, from a therapeutics of bleeding, purging and close confinement, through the era of moral treatment and nonrestraint, to a fin-de-siecle degenerationism and despair, men claiming expertise in the treatment of mental disorder sought to construct a collective identity as trustworthy and scientifically-qualified professionals. This series of biographies aims to answer the question "How successful were they in creating such a new identity?"
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
With the rise of professionals in madness during the 19th-century, the trade in lunacy flourished. Masters of Bedlam describes both how these "mad-doctors" slowly developed into the psychiatrists of today and the evolution of treatment of the insane. The authors explain how in the early part of the century, rich lunatics were sent to well-appointed asylums, the rest to pauper madhouses run by the state. Most of the book is devoted to several eminent practitioners who represent crucial phases in the growth of the profession. John Haslam (1764-1844), superintendent of England's infamous Bethlem asylum, wrote tracts that preached gentleness of manner while the inmates were kept half naked and chained to the wall. John Conolly began by opposing the incarceration of lunatics and ended by urging the institutionalization of broad classes of people, including "the morally perverse and socially inadequate." The Scots, W.A.F. Browne and Alexander Morison, called themselves alienists and accepted phrenology as external evidence of brain disorder and in the 1850s, John Charles Bucknill wrote the first textbook on insanity with facial drawings of the five basic types. Finally, Henry Maudsley attributed "morbid degeneration" to an evil heredity and warned women to attend to "the periodical tides of her organization" or risk chorea, epilepsy and nervous disorders. By the end of this bizarre history, the ambiguity of the term "mad-doctors" becomes clear, and one wonders who the truly insane were.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Library Journal
Princeton Univ. Jan. 1997. c.408p. permanent paper. illus. bibliog. index. ISBN
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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