scholarly journals Unnatural Womanhood: Moral Treatment, Puerperal Insanity and the Female Patients at the Fremantle Lunatic Asylum, 1858–1908

2020 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
pp. 171-195
Author(s):  
Alexandra Wallis
Keyword(s):  
Lunatic Asylum ◽  
Moral Treatment ◽  
Female Patients

The invisible woman: Susan Carnegie and Montrose Lunatic Asylum

2019 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 409-423 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sharlene D Walbaum
Keyword(s):  
Mental Illness ◽  
Lunatic Asylum ◽  
Safe Haven ◽  
Moral Treatment ◽  
Town Council ◽  
Current Wave ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
English Speaking World ◽  
The Town ◽  
The Invisible

In 1779, Susan Carnegie (1743–1821) persuaded the Town Council of Montrose, Scotland, to build a safe haven for those suffering from both poverty and mental illness. As a result, Montrose Lunatic Asylum became not only the first public asylum in Scotland, but among the first in the English-speaking world. Carnegie – born 175 years before women could vote – championed a humane and science-based response to mental illness. Montrose Asylum practised moral treatment a decade before Tuke and Pinel. As a champion of the new mental science, her enduring influence resulted in the hiring of the young W.A.F. Browne. Her story enriches the current wave of scholarship on Scottish psychiatry in particular, and on women in psychiatry in general.

Conclusion

2019 ◽  
pp. 194-200
Author(s):  
Wendy Gonaver
Keyword(s):  
Outpatient Care ◽  
History Of Psychiatry ◽  
Lunatic Asylum ◽  
Moral Treatment ◽  
Professional Experiences ◽  
African Apes ◽  
Care Models ◽  
History Of ◽  
Moral Therapy

The conclusion opens with discussion of Edgar Allen Poe’s “The System of Dr. Tarr and Prof. Feather,” a satire of moral treatment. Poe was a distant cousin of Superintendent John M. Galt, and he might have based his fictional institution on the Eastern Lunatic Asylum, particularly his depiction of the attendants as African apes. This story provides an opportunity to review the ideals and shortcomings of moral therapy, and to connect the history of psychiatry to analysis of race. It is asserted that racial antipathy undermined humane asylum care and stalled implementation of successful outpatient care models. Instead, moral medicine gave way to moral hygiene and eugenics as asylum and prison moved closer together. The conclusion ends with a brief discussion of psychiatrist Franz Fanon, who drew upon his professional experiences to outline a different asylum nightmare than that envisioned by Poe.

Vital Statistics, and Observations on the first thousand Female Patients admitted into the Somerset County Lunatic Asylum; the Results compared with an equal number of Male Patients, together with an Analysis of the Causes of Death in both Sexes

1865 ◽  
Vol 10 (52) ◽  
pp. 491-513 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Boyd
Keyword(s):  
Causes Of Death ◽  
Vital Statistics ◽  
Lunatic Asylum ◽  
Present Communication ◽  
General Review ◽  
Female Patients ◽  
Somerset County ◽  
Male Patients

In a previous number (39) of this Journal are recorded the statistics of the first thousand cases of male patients admitted into the Somerset Lunatic Asylum, with an analysis of the causes of death. The same method is followed in the present communication with regard to the first thousand female admissions; a comparison is made between the sexes, and a general review from some authorities on these subjects.

scholarly journals ‘I am very glad and cheered when I hear the flute’: The Treatment of Criminal Lunatics in Late Victorian Broadmoor

2016 ◽  
Vol 60 (4) ◽  
pp. 473-491 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jade Shepherd
Keyword(s):  
Lunatic Asylum ◽  
Privileged Access ◽  
Moral Treatment ◽  
Victorian Period ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Perspective

Through an examination of previously unseen archival records, including patients’ letters, this article examines the treatment and experiences of patients in late Victorian Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum and stakes the place of this institution within the broader history of therapeutic regimes in British asylums. Two main arguments are put forth. The first relates to the evolution of treatment in Victorian asylums. Historians tend to agree that in the 1860s and 1870s ‘psychiatric pessimism’ took hold, as the optimism that had accompanied the growth of moral treatment, along with its promise of a cure for insanity, abated. It has hitherto been taken for granted that all asylums reflected this change. I question this assumption by showing that Broadmoor did not sit neatly within this framework. Rather, the continued emphasis on work, leisure and kindness privileged at this institution into the late Victorian period was often welcomed positively by patients and physicians alike. Second, I show that, in Broadmoor’s case, moral treatment was determined not so much by the distinction between the sexes as the two different classes of patients – Queen’s pleasure patients and insane convicts – in the asylum. This distinction between patients not only led to different modes of treatment within Broadmoor, but had an impact on patients’ asylum experiences. The privileged access to patients’ letters that the Broadmoor records provide not only offers a new perspective on the evolution of treatment in Victorian asylums, but also reveals the rarely accessible views of asylum patients and their families on asylum care.

The architecture of psychological management: the Irish asylums (1801–1922)

1996 ◽  
Vol 26 (6) ◽  
pp. 1179-1189 ◽  
Author(s):  
Markus Reuber
Keyword(s):  
Family Environment ◽  
Institutional Design ◽  
Treatment Approach ◽  
Structural Features ◽  
Lunatic Asylum ◽  
Third Generation ◽  
Moral Treatment ◽  
The Third ◽  
Moral Management ◽  
Psychological Management

SynopsisThis analysis examines some of the psychological, philosophical and sociological motives behind the development of pauper lunatic asylum architecture in Ireland during the time of the Anglo–Irish union (1801–1922). Ground plans and structural features are used to define five psycho-architectonic generations. While isolation and classification were the prime objectives in the first public asylum in Ireland (1810–1814), a combination of the ideas of a psychological, ‘moral’, management and ‘panoptic’ architecture led to a radial institutional design during the next phase of construction (1817–1835). The asylums of the third generation (1845–1855) lacked ‘panoptic’ features but they were still intended to allow a proper ‘moral’ management of the inmates, and to create a therapeutic family environment. By the time the institutions of the fourth epoch were erected (1862–1869) the ‘moral’ treatment approach had been given up, and asylums were built to allow a psychological management by ‘association’. The last institutions (1894–1922) built before Ireland's acquisition of Dominion status (1922) were intended to foster the development of a curative society.

Some Results of Night Nursing; being a Record of the Wet and Dirty Cases in the Sussex Lunatic Asylum, Hayward's Heath, during the first six months of 1861

1861 ◽  
Vol 7 (39) ◽  
pp. 391-398 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Lockhart Robertson
Keyword(s):  
Lunatic Asylum ◽  
Moral Treatment

It has been suggested to me by a professional friend, in whose judgment I place much confidence, that I shall aid in demonstrating the value of night nursing in the moral treatment of the insane, and perhaps remove prejudices which yet exist against its use, by laying before the members of this Association a record of my experience of the system at the Sussex Asylum during the first half of this year.

Report of the Lunatic Asylum at Aarhus for the year 1899. By the Physician-Superintendent, Prof. Knud Pontoppidan

1901 ◽  
Vol 47 (198) ◽  
pp. 613-614
Author(s):  
W. W. Ireland
Keyword(s):  
Lunatic Asylum ◽  
Female Patients ◽  
Daily Average ◽  
Male Patients ◽  
In The Beginning

In this report the distinguished Professor confines himself mostly to statistical details. In the beginning of 1899 there were in the asylum at Aarhus 257 male patients and 269 female patients—526 in all. During the year there were admitted 55 males and 72 females—127 in all. There were treated during the year 312 males and 341 females—653 in all. The daily average under treatment was 247 males and 253 females. There were dismissed 77 males and 98 females.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Wendy Gonaver
Keyword(s):  
Corporal Punishment ◽  
Medical Model ◽  
The United States ◽  
Lunatic Asylum ◽  
Mechanical Restraint ◽  
Therapeutic Environment ◽  
Moral Treatment ◽  
Black Patients ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Insight Into

The introduction surveys nineteenth-century asylums. Two features are emphasized: 1) the transatlantic appeal of moral treatment and its demise in the United States after the Civil War; and 2) the refusal of most asylums to admit black patients. Advocates of moral treatment eschewed corporal punishment and sought to minimize reliance on mechanical restraint, depending instead on positive psychological inducements to inculcate temperate behavior. Most superintendents worried that the presence of black patients on the wards would denote pauper disgrace to the white public. Because the Eastern Lunatic Asylum in Virginia did accept slaves and free black patients, its records offers unique insight into the relationship between race and early psychiatry. These records are more nuanced than the proslavery publications of Samuel Cartwright. Although the inherent violence of slavery made impossible the creation of a therapeutic environment free of coercion, it is argued that the asylum simultaneously promoted patients’ rights and a medical model of suffering that was detrimental to African Americans.

As the Eagle to the Sparrow

2019 ◽  
pp. 51-81
Author(s):  
Wendy Gonaver
Keyword(s):  
Moral Judgment ◽  
Lunatic Asylum ◽  
Slave Labor ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Moral Treatment ◽  
Enslaved Women

This chapter discusses the lives of the enslaved men and women who worked at the Eastern Lunatic Asylum, particularly their interactions with patients and administrators. Enslaved attendants were tasked with arduous labor; enslaved women were assigned the most menial jobs. They were also entrusted with significant authority; some were even authorized to seize and forcibly medicate patients when moral methods failed. Dorothea Dix and other asylum reformers criticized the asylum for its reliance on slave labor because they didn’t believe slaves were capable of providing moral treatment. Despite the challenges of institutional caregiving, enslaved attendants used their influence to assert their capacity for moral judgment. The actions of asylum slaves suggest that an ethic empathic equality rooted in Afro-Christianity was central to their conception of care.

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