“The laboratory and the asylum: Francis Walker Mott and the pathological laboratory at London County Council Lunatic Asylum, Claybury, Essex (1895–1916),” by Tatjana Buklijas. In charting the use of such a medical technology in the asylum, this article explores the utility of a practice-oriented approach in the history of psychiatry – as a window onto the alienist profession and as a means of investigating how new medical technologies were assimilated into everyday practice. The sphygmograph, an instrument to measure and visually chart the pulse, was used by a number of asylum researchers in the late nineteenth century in an attempt to better understand mental disease. “Bloody technology: the sphygmograph in asylum practice,” by Jennifer Wallis. This article will challenge understanding of institutional death, the legal processes required for dissection, and mental healthcare. The examinations would therefore be better defined as dissections. It will be argued that the purpose of the examination was partly to appease the demands of the Commissioners in Lunacy, to protect the asylum against accusations of malpractice, and to appease the resident assistant medical officer’s own morbid curiosity. By examining the practice at the Littlemore Asylum of Oxford, the definition of the asylum post-mortem will be questioned and issues of consent and ownership of the dead body explored. This article examines the purpose of the post-mortem in the late Victorian asylum and discusses what the findings reveal about contemporary understanding of mental health. “Post-mortem in the Victorian asylum: practice, purpose and findings at the Littlemore County Lunatic Asylum, 1886–7,” by Lynsey T Cullen.
Significant backlash in the press against these new ideas pushed the profession away from such psychological exploration and back towards its medical roots that located criminal insanity simply within the organic constitution of its sufferers. Some success was achieved in presenting a form of expertise that centred on the ability of the experts to detect quite subtle, ‘psychological’ forms of dangerous madness within the minds of offenders in France and more extensively in England.
The pioneers of psychiatric thought were motivated to explore such diagnoses because they promised public recognition in the high status surroundings of the criminal court. This paper traces the significance of the diagnosis of ‘moral insanity’ (and the related diagnoses of ‘monomania’ and ‘manie sans délire’) to the development of psychiatry as a profession in the nineteenth century. “Moral insanity and psychological disorder: the hybrid roots of psychiatry,” by David W Jones. Also explored are the laboratory in the asylum, the post-mortem in the asylum, the sphygmograph in the asylum, and much more. Articles in this issue explore the diagnosis of moral insanity and the French ethical tradition in psychiatry. The September 2017 issue of History of Psychiatry is now online.
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