Insanity and the Lunatic Asylum in the Nineteenth Century

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Serena Trowbridge
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Lunatic Asylum

scholarly journals Sexual abuse by superintending staff in the nineteenth-century lunatic asylum: medical practice, complaint and risk

2020 ◽  
pp. 0957154X2096729
Author(s):  
Cara Dobbing ◽  
Alannah Tomkins
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Health Care ◽  
Lunatic Asylum ◽  
Patient Relationship ◽  
The West ◽  
Medical Specialization ◽  
Medical Careers ◽  
The Press

The nineteenth century witnessed a great shift in how insanity was regarded and treated. Well documented is the emergence of psychiatry as a medical specialization and the role of lunatic asylums in the West. Unclear are the relationships between the heads of institutions and the individuals treated within them. This article uses two cases at either end of the nineteenth century to demonstrate sexual misdemeanours in sites of mental health care, and particularly how they were dealt with, both legally and in the press. They illustrate issues around cultures of complaint and the consequences of these for medical careers. Far from being representative, they highlight the need for further research into the doctor–patient relationship within asylums, and what happened when the boundaries were blurred.

scholarly journals Accounting for madness: the “Real Casa dei Matti” of Palermo 1824-1860

2017 ◽  
Vol 30 (5) ◽  
pp. 1111-1141 ◽  
Author(s):  
Warwick Funnell ◽  
Valerio Antonelli ◽  
Raffaele D’Alessio ◽  
Roberto Rossi
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Lunatic Asylum ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Public Authorities ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Public ◽  
Lunatic Asylums ◽  
Accounting Reports ◽  
First Time

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to understand the role played by accounting in managing an early nineteenth century lunatic asylum in Palermo, Italy. Design/methodology/approach The paper is informed by Foucault’s studies of lunatic asylums and his work on governmentality which gave prominence to the role of statistics, the “science of the State”. Findings This paper identifies a number of roles played by accounting in the management of the lunatic asylum studied. Most importantly, information which formed the basis of accounting reports was used to describe, classify and give visibility and measurability to the “deviance” of the insane. It also legitimated the role played by lunatic asylums, as entrusted to them in post-Napoleonic early nineteenth century society, and was a tool to mediate with the public authorities to provide adequate resources for the institution to operate. Research limitations/implications This paper encourages accounting scholars to engage more widely with socio-historical research that will encompass organisations such as lunatic asylums. Originality/value This paper provides, for the first time, a case of accounting applied to a lunatic asylum from a socio-historical perspective.

The paper technology of confinement: evolving criteria in admission forms (1850–73)

2021 ◽  
pp. 0957154X2098533
Author(s):  
Filippo M Sposini
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Clinical Information ◽  
Lunatic Asylum ◽  
Important Material ◽  
Legal Assessment ◽  
Paper Technology

This paper investigates the role of admission forms in the regulation of asylum confinement in the second half of the nineteenth century. Taking the Toronto Lunatic Asylum as a case study it traces the evolution of the forms’ content and structure during the first decades of this institution. Admission forms provide important material for understanding the medico-legal assessment of lunacy in a certain jurisdiction. First, they show how the description of insanity depended on a plurality of actors. Second, doctors were not necessarily required to indicate symptoms of derangement. Third, patients’ relatives played a fundamental role in providing clinical information. From an historiographical perspective, this paper invites scholars to consider the function of standardized documents in shaping the written identity of patients.

Madness and the Making of a Colonial Order in Burma

2012 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 406-435 ◽  
Author(s):  
JONATHAN SAHA
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
European Community ◽  
Lunatic Asylum ◽  
Criminal Courts ◽  
Administration Of Justice ◽  
Colonial Order

AbstractIn general, during the nineteenth century the British were indifferent to the condition of the insane in colonial Burma. This was most apparent in the Rangoon lunatic asylum, which was a neglected institution reformed reluctantly and episodically following internal crises of discipline and the occasional public scandal. However, whilst psychiatry was generally neglected, British officials did intervene when and where insanity threatened the colonial order. This occurred in the criminal courts where the presence of suspected lunatics was disruptive to the administration of justice. Insanity was also a problem for the colonial regime within the European community, where erratic behaviour was viewed as a threat to racial prestige. This paper shows how, despite its neglected status in Burma, psychiatric knowledge contributed to British understandings of Burman masculinity and to the maintenance of colonial norms of European behaviour.

Gothic Truths in the Asylum

2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 176-190
Author(s):  
Benjamin E. Noad
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Lunatic Asylum ◽  
Functional Site ◽  
Gothic Fiction ◽  
String Of Pearls

This article suggests that Victorian Gothic prose fictions privilege the voices of madness, where, operating in the historical lunatic asylum, truth is encrypted. It begins by expanding upon the relevant background contexts of the nineteenth century, with focus upon the medicalisation of madness, and goes on to offer fresh critical interpretations of false confinement in two pinnacles of nineteenth-century Gothic fiction: the penny dreadful, The String of Pearls (1846–7), and Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897). The article argues that Gothic writing simultaneously registers and articulates the silence of a madness that has been perceived to threaten rational speech; Gothic subverts the view of the mental asylum as guarantor of truth by demonstrating that this functional site is, by contrast, the generator of falsehoods.

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