Pub Date : 2024-09-01Epub Date: 2024-06-14DOI: 10.1177/0957154X241254506
Haszira Muhamad Yusof, Azlizan Mat Enh, Suffian Mansor
The Straits Settlements, a collective colony under the administration of British Malaya, was a very unhealthy area in the early years of the nineteenth century. One of the most common sicknesses was mental illness, which could not be cured by medicines. The number of women suffering from mental illness was higher than in men, and it was found that there were many internal and external causes. The increasing number of women patients affected the role of mental hospitals, which were not only for treatment purposes, but also for business. This study will discuss the factors causing women to suffer from mental illness, and the role of the asylum for women mental patients in the nineteenth century.
{"title":"A history of mental illness among women in the Straits Settlements in the nineteenth century.","authors":"Haszira Muhamad Yusof, Azlizan Mat Enh, Suffian Mansor","doi":"10.1177/0957154X241254506","DOIUrl":"10.1177/0957154X241254506","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The Straits Settlements, a collective colony under the administration of British Malaya, was a very unhealthy area in the early years of the nineteenth century. One of the most common sicknesses was mental illness, which could not be cured by medicines. The number of women suffering from mental illness was higher than in men, and it was found that there were many internal and external causes. The increasing number of women patients affected the role of mental hospitals, which were not only for treatment purposes, but also for business. This study will discuss the factors causing women to suffer from mental illness, and the role of the asylum for women mental patients in the nineteenth century.</p>","PeriodicalId":45965,"journal":{"name":"History of Psychiatry","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2024-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141321791","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-09-01Epub Date: 2024-06-10DOI: 10.1177/0957154X241254927
Chiara Thumiger
Phrenitis is ubiquitous in ancient medicine and philosophy. Galen mentions the disease innumerable times, Patristic authors take it as a favourite allegory of human flaws, and no ancient doctor fails to diagnose it and attempt its cure. Yet the nature of this once famous disease has not been properly understood by scholars. My book provides the first full history of phrenitis. In doing so, it surveys ancient ideas about the interactions between body and soul, both in health and in disease. It also addresses ancient ideas about bodily health, mental soundness and moral 'goodness', and their heritage in contemporary psychiatry, offering a chance to reflect critically on contemporary ideas about what it means to be 'insane'.
{"title":"Phrenitis <i>and the pathology of the mind in western medical thought (fifth century BCE to twentieth century cE)</i>.","authors":"Chiara Thumiger","doi":"10.1177/0957154X241254927","DOIUrl":"10.1177/0957154X241254927","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p><i>Phrenitis</i> is ubiquitous in ancient medicine and philosophy. Galen mentions the disease innumerable times, Patristic authors take it as a favourite allegory of human flaws, and no ancient doctor fails to diagnose it and attempt its cure. Yet the nature of this once famous disease has not been properly understood by scholars. My book provides the first full history of <i>phrenitis</i>. In doing so, it surveys ancient ideas about the interactions between body and soul, both in health and in disease. It also addresses ancient ideas about bodily health, mental soundness and moral 'goodness', and their heritage in contemporary psychiatry, offering a chance to reflect critically on contemporary ideas about what it means to be 'insane'.</p>","PeriodicalId":45965,"journal":{"name":"History of Psychiatry","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2024-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141301849","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-09-01Epub Date: 2023-12-05DOI: 10.1177/0957154X231211727
Leonard Smith
Following the collapse of the Delahoyde and Lucett joint enterprise, James Lucett resumed practice on his own account. He continued to implement his 'process', promoting it as a unique cure for intractable cases of insanity. For two decades he pursued his activities, with varying success, at different locations in the London area. He maintained his public profile by extensive advertising, letters to newspapers and published pamphlets, extolling his unique 'discovery' and recounting claims of successful cures achieved. Accusations of quackery persisted along with other hostile criticism, particularly from medical men, which Lucett strongly challenged. Periodically he faced more serious difficulties due to legal infractions or financial hardships, but somehow Lucett survived most of these and persevered with his endeavours.
{"title":"The saga of James Lucett and the process for curing insanity, Part 2 (1814-38): 'Insanity cured'.","authors":"Leonard Smith","doi":"10.1177/0957154X231211727","DOIUrl":"10.1177/0957154X231211727","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Following the collapse of the Delahoyde and Lucett joint enterprise, James Lucett resumed practice on his own account. He continued to implement his 'process', promoting it as a unique cure for intractable cases of insanity. For two decades he pursued his activities, with varying success, at different locations in the London area. He maintained his public profile by extensive advertising, letters to newspapers and published pamphlets, extolling his unique 'discovery' and recounting claims of successful cures achieved. Accusations of quackery persisted along with other hostile criticism, particularly from medical men, which Lucett strongly challenged. Periodically he faced more serious difficulties due to legal infractions or financial hardships, but somehow Lucett survived most of these and persevered with his endeavours.</p>","PeriodicalId":45965,"journal":{"name":"History of Psychiatry","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2024-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11363462/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138488753","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-09-01Epub Date: 2024-05-14DOI: 10.1177/0957154X241246385
Alejandro Parra
In the mid-nineteenth century, magnetic theories penetrated other recognized medical practices in Argentina in order to rationalize their procedures, in a culture that accepted and validated magnetism as a positive science. At the start of the twentieth century, mesmerists created a society, published books and journals, and carried out a large welfare programme; there were public lectures, and magnetic treatment for spiritualists and the general public, emphasizing the therapeutic properties of mesmerism. Magnetologists/mesmerists measured vital radiation and built devices using sensitive objects as 'physical' evidence of it. There was an interest in acquiring and using artefacts to measure human radiation useful in medicine. Magnetic practices survived until the end of the 1920s, when they lost importance.
{"title":"Human radiation for medicine, spiritism and hypnosis in Argentina: scientific controversies around vital radiations (1880-1930).","authors":"Alejandro Parra","doi":"10.1177/0957154X241246385","DOIUrl":"10.1177/0957154X241246385","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In the mid-nineteenth century, magnetic theories penetrated other recognized medical practices in Argentina in order to rationalize their procedures, in a culture that accepted and validated magnetism as a positive science. At the start of the twentieth century, mesmerists created a society, published books and journals, and carried out a large welfare programme; there were public lectures, and magnetic treatment for spiritualists and the general public, emphasizing the therapeutic properties of mesmerism. Magnetologists/mesmerists measured vital radiation and built devices using sensitive objects as 'physical' evidence of it. There was an interest in acquiring and using artefacts to measure human radiation useful in medicine. Magnetic practices survived until the end of the 1920s, when they lost importance.</p>","PeriodicalId":45965,"journal":{"name":"History of Psychiatry","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2024-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140917154","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-09-01Epub Date: 2024-05-27DOI: 10.1177/0957154X241248720
Olivier Walusinski, Anna Fitzgerald
In 1762, Louis-Antoine Marquis de Caraccioli (1719-1803), a prolific writer of the eighteenth century, dedicated a book to a psychological theme that medicine has forgotten: 'gaité' in French, which we will translate as 'cheerfulness'. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, this work inspired two doctoral theses in medicine, one defended in Montpellier, the other in Paris. In their texts, Louis Monferran (1785-?) and Vincent Rémi Giganon (1794-1857) explored the therapeutic benefits of the medical prescription of cheerfulness. In addition to lifestyle recommendations, they focused on the psychotropic substances available to them: alcohol, coca, hemp and opiates. In an original and novel way, Giganon introduced and recommended 'le gaz oxydule d'azote inspiré', or inhaled nitrous oxide gas.
{"title":"Cheerfulness in the history of psychiatry.","authors":"Olivier Walusinski, Anna Fitzgerald","doi":"10.1177/0957154X241248720","DOIUrl":"10.1177/0957154X241248720","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In 1762, Louis-Antoine Marquis de Caraccioli (1719-1803), a prolific writer of the eighteenth century, dedicated a book to a psychological theme that medicine has forgotten: '<i>gaité</i>' in French, which we will translate as 'cheerfulness'. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, this work inspired two doctoral theses in medicine, one defended in Montpellier, the other in Paris. In their texts, Louis Monferran (1785-?) and Vincent Rémi Giganon (1794-1857) explored the therapeutic benefits of the medical prescription of cheerfulness. In addition to lifestyle recommendations, they focused on the psychotropic substances available to them: alcohol, coca, hemp and opiates. In an original and novel way, Giganon introduced and recommended '<i>le gaz oxydule d'azote inspiré</i>', or inhaled nitrous oxide gas.</p>","PeriodicalId":45965,"journal":{"name":"History of Psychiatry","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2024-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141157740","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-09-01Epub Date: 2024-06-05DOI: 10.1177/0957154X241254688
Chloé Loubry, Marion Hendrickx, Emmanuel Drouin
We report on the play entitled Le Pain quotidien (The daily bread) by Marcel Réja (1873-1957), a French alienist and historian of art in asylums. He also wrote short plays, although he is less well known as a playwright. The plays were printed just in time for the performance, which often took place on the day of the asylum fair. Here, we discuss a one-act play consisting of four scenes in which the actors are his patients.
{"title":"Marcel Réja and theatre therapy.","authors":"Chloé Loubry, Marion Hendrickx, Emmanuel Drouin","doi":"10.1177/0957154X241254688","DOIUrl":"10.1177/0957154X241254688","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>We report on the play entitled <i>Le Pain quotidien</i> (The daily bread) by Marcel Réja (1873-1957), a French alienist and historian of art in asylums. He also wrote short plays, although he is less well known as a playwright. The plays were printed just in time for the performance, which often took place on the day of the asylum fair. Here, we discuss a one-act play consisting of four scenes in which the actors are his patients.</p>","PeriodicalId":45965,"journal":{"name":"History of Psychiatry","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2024-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141263086","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-09-01Epub Date: 2024-06-11DOI: 10.1177/0957154X241254224
Birk Engmann
This article investigates the diversity of social and political assertions in the work of Vladimir M Bekhterev. Its findings reveal that he drew social and political conclusions based on his doctrine of reflexology. Moreover, he propagated the use of statistical investigations by scientific and governmental institutions to estimate the social and healthcare needs of the population. These conclusions accord with Bekhterev's desire for a transformation of society that would bring continued progress to people's social and living conditions. Additionally, the findings of this research work also support the idea that Bekhterev should be regarded as an important protagonist of neuroethics, a relatively recent field of research.
{"title":"Social issues relating to Vladimir Bekhterev's concept of reflexology: a hitherto underestimated aspect of his work.","authors":"Birk Engmann","doi":"10.1177/0957154X241254224","DOIUrl":"10.1177/0957154X241254224","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This article investigates the diversity of social and political assertions in the work of Vladimir M Bekhterev. Its findings reveal that he drew social and political conclusions based on his doctrine of reflexology. Moreover, he propagated the use of statistical investigations by scientific and governmental institutions to estimate the social and healthcare needs of the population. These conclusions accord with Bekhterev's desire for a transformation of society that would bring continued progress to people's social and living conditions. Additionally, the findings of this research work also support the idea that Bekhterev should be regarded as an important protagonist of neuroethics, a relatively recent field of research.</p>","PeriodicalId":45965,"journal":{"name":"History of Psychiatry","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2024-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11363463/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141307079","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-08-08DOI: 10.1177/0957154X241269206
Charlotte Richardson, Alastair Robson, Loopinder Sood, I Nicol Ferrier, Andy Owen
Mortality is closely linked to age, sex, and social and historical context. Standardised Mortality Rates (SMR) address these contextual factors by comparing mortality in a population under study with that in people of the same age and sex, the same period in history and from a similar cultural context. We use records from the Hatton Asylum and contemporaneous census data in order to calculate SMR in the asylum population, showing rates that were about 2.5 times greater than the population at the time. This is much lower than crude mortality rates, which we calculated as being more than seven times greater than in the population. The SMR method may enable a more meaningful understanding of mortality in asylums or other institutions.
{"title":"Mortality in the Victorian asylum: was it so high? Standardised Mortality Rate compared with historical methods.","authors":"Charlotte Richardson, Alastair Robson, Loopinder Sood, I Nicol Ferrier, Andy Owen","doi":"10.1177/0957154X241269206","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0957154X241269206","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Mortality is closely linked to age, sex, and social and historical context. Standardised Mortality Rates (SMR) address these contextual factors by comparing mortality in a population under study with that in people of the same age and sex, the same period in history and from a similar cultural context. We use records from the Hatton Asylum and contemporaneous census data in order to calculate SMR in the asylum population, showing rates that were about 2.5 times greater than the population at the time. This is much lower than crude mortality rates, which we calculated as being more than seven times greater than in the population. The SMR method may enable a more meaningful understanding of mortality in asylums or other institutions.</p>","PeriodicalId":45965,"journal":{"name":"History of Psychiatry","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2024-08-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141907966","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-07-27DOI: 10.1177/0957154X241263990
Joana Escamilla Lerner, Pilar de Castro-Manglano, Pilar León-Sanz
This study delves into the historical documentation from 1900 to 1936 by Spanish doctors and educators concerning children's hyperactivity. By focusing on medical perspectives of the time, we aim to explore the conceptualisation of childhood phenomenology within the context of significant international literature of that era. The publications of doctors Jerónimo Moragas and Gonzalo Rodríguez Lafora, along with educators Augusto Vidal Perera and José Sarmiento Lausén, will be examined to understand the medical and educational approaches to childhood restlessness. Additionally, the study will review diverse perspectives on this disorder. The research also highlights a noticeable gap in the assistance provided to these children. Ultimately, the article provides insights into how society and childcare professionals addressed the phenomenon of childhood hyperactivity.
{"title":"The notion of excessive childhood restlessness in Spain at the beginning of the twentieth century.","authors":"Joana Escamilla Lerner, Pilar de Castro-Manglano, Pilar León-Sanz","doi":"10.1177/0957154X241263990","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0957154X241263990","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This study delves into the historical documentation from 1900 to 1936 by Spanish doctors and educators concerning children's hyperactivity. By focusing on medical perspectives of the time, we aim to explore the conceptualisation of childhood phenomenology within the context of significant international literature of that era. The publications of doctors Jerónimo Moragas and Gonzalo Rodríguez Lafora, along with educators Augusto Vidal Perera and José Sarmiento Lausén, will be examined to understand the medical and educational approaches to childhood restlessness. Additionally, the study will review diverse perspectives on this disorder. The research also highlights a noticeable gap in the assistance provided to these children. Ultimately, the article provides insights into how society and childcare professionals addressed the phenomenon of childhood hyperactivity.</p>","PeriodicalId":45965,"journal":{"name":"History of Psychiatry","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2024-07-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141789439","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-07-23DOI: 10.1177/0957154X241261031
Ivana S Marková
As a deeply hybrid discipline, psychiatry demands research that tackles the concepts constituting it and its objects. This is an essential prerequisite to empirical studies, the validity of which are directly dependent on a clear understanding of the underlying concepts. Empathy and sympathy are concepts used variably and inconsistently in clinical practice and research, with ensuing uncertainties around their role and meaning. Using a historical epistemology approach, this paper compares these concepts by examining the structures, intersections, stabilities and factors that shape them. It shows that neither concept is invariant, and, despite overlap, the concepts are essentially different, underpinned by different assumptions, holding different functions and capturing different phenomena. In turn, such differences require apposite approaches to their empirical study.
{"title":"Empathy or sympathy: a necessary distinction?","authors":"Ivana S Marková","doi":"10.1177/0957154X241261031","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/0957154X241261031","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>As a deeply hybrid discipline, psychiatry demands research that tackles the concepts constituting it and its objects. This is an essential prerequisite to empirical studies, the validity of which are directly dependent on a clear understanding of the underlying concepts. Empathy and sympathy are concepts used variably and inconsistently in clinical practice and research, with ensuing uncertainties around their role and meaning. Using a historical epistemology approach, this paper compares these concepts by examining the structures, intersections, stabilities and factors that shape them. It shows that neither concept is invariant, and, despite overlap, the concepts are essentially different, underpinned by different assumptions, holding different functions and capturing different phenomena. In turn, such differences require apposite approaches to their empirical study.</p>","PeriodicalId":45965,"journal":{"name":"History of Psychiatry","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2024-07-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141749236","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}