Investigating the Body in the Victorian Asylum: Doctors, Patients, and Practices (Mental Health in Historical Perspective)

This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. This book explores how the body was investigated in the late nineteenth-century asylum in Britain. As more and more Victorian asylum doctors looked to the bodily fabric to reveal the ‘truth’ of mental disease, a whole host of techniques and technologies were brought to bear upon the patient's body. These practices encompassed the clinical and the pathological, from testing the patient's reflexes to dissecting the brain. __Investigating the Body in the Victorian Asylum__ takes a unique approach to the topic, conducting a chapter-by-chapter dissection of the body. It considers how asylum doctors viewed and investigated the skin, muscles, bones, brain, and bodily fluids. The book demonstrates the importance of the body in nineteenth-century psychiatry as well as how the asylum functioned as a site of research, and will be of value to historians of psychiatry, the body, and scientific practice. Acknowledgements 7 A Note on the Text 9 Contents 11 Abbreviations 12 List of Figures 13 1 Introduction 15 Histories of the Body 16 The Body and Practice 19 The West Riding Asylum 21 General Paralysis of the Insane 24 The Asylum Patient 26 Outline of this Book 28 2 Skin 34 Fragments of Asylum Practice 35 Photographs in the Asylum and the Archive 38 The Growth of Dermatology 47 The Skin in General Paralysis 51 The Skin as Site of Surgery and Therapy 58 3 Muscle 73 Body and Brain in the Late Nineteenth Century 74 General Paralysis and Muscle Wastage 77 Muscle and Mind 85 Physical Examination and Inscription 92 The Patient and the Case Record 99 4 Bone 112 A Culture of Violence? 113 The Role of the Inquest 119 General Paralysis and Softened Bones 124 Quantifying the Bodily Fabric 131 Questioning Pathological Research and Alienist Expertise 136 5 Brain 151 Studying the Brain 152 Viewing and Reading the Brain 157 Localising Lesions 164 Putting the Brain Under the Microscope 174 6 Fluid 190 The Possibilities of the Postmortem 191 Trepanation and General Paralysis 195 Differential Diagnosis: General Paralysis and Alcohol 200 Toxins in General Paralysis 206 Predisposition and Mental Disease 213 Conclusion 230 Outline placeholder 0 Bodies and Practices 231 The Spaces of the Asylum 233 An Old Disease Resurfaces 236 Appendix: Demographic Characteristics of West Riding Lunatic Asylum Admissions 240 Bibliography 243 Index 272 "This book explores how the body was investigated in the late nineteenth-century asylum in Britain. As more and more Victorian asylum doctors looked to the bodily fabric to reveal the 'truth' of mental disease, a whole host of techniques and technologies were brought to bear upon the patient's body. These practices encompassed the clinical and the pathological, from testing the patient's reflexes to dissecting the brain. Investigating the Body in the Victorian Asylum takes a unique approach to the topic, conducting a chapter-by-chapter dissection of the body. It considers how asylum doctors viewed and investigated the skin, muscles, bones, brain, and bodily fluids. The book demonstrates the importance of the body in nineteenth-century psychiatry as well as how the asylum functioned as a site of research, and will be of value to historians of psychiatry, the body, and scientific practice."-- From publisher's website

This book explores how the body was investigated in the late nineteenth-century asylum in Britain. As more and more Victorian asylum doctors looked to the bodily fabric to reveal the 'truth' of mental disease, a whole host of techniques and technologies were brought to bear upon the patient's body. These practices encompassed the clinical and the pathological, from testing the patient's reflexes to dissecting the brain. Investigating the Body in the Victorian Asylum takes a unique approach to the topic, conducting a chapter-by-chapter dissection of the body. It considers how asylum doctors viewed and investigated the skin, muscles, bones, brain, and bodily fluids. The book demonstrates the importance of the body in nineteenth-century psychiatry as well as how the asylum functioned as a site of research, and will be of value to historians of psychiatry, the body, and scientific practice.

Front Matter ....Pages i-xvi Introduction (Jennifer Wallis)....Pages 1-19 Skin (Jennifer Wallis)....Pages 21-59 Muscle (Jennifer Wallis)....Pages 61-99 Bone (Jennifer Wallis)....Pages 101-139 Brain (Jennifer Wallis)....Pages 141-179 Fluid (Jennifer Wallis)....Pages 181-220 Back Matter ....Pages 221-276