The Confinement of the Insane: International Perspectives, 1800–1965

by Edited by Roy Porter , David Wright

• ISBN13: 9780521283342
• ISBN10: 0521283345
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2011-06-16
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

This collection of essays explores the development of the lunatic asylum, and the concept of confinement for those considered insane, in different national contexts over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Leading scholars in the field of medical history have contributed extensive primary research through individual case studies in the context of the legal, social, economic, and political situations of thirteen different countries. The book represents the first truly international history of the mental hospital, and is, therefore, a landmark comparative study in the history of medicine.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Insanity, institutions and society: the case of Robben Island Lunatic Asylum, 1846-1910

The confinement of the insane in Switzerland, 1900-70: Cery and Bel-Air asylums

Family strategies and medical power: 'voluntary' committal in a Parisian asylum, 1876-1914

The confinement of the insane in Victorian Canada: the Hamilton and Toronto asylums, c. 1861-91

Passage to the asylum: the role of the police in committals of the insane in Victoria, Australia, 1848-1900

The 'Wittenauer Heilstätten' in Berlin: a case record study of psychiatric patients in Germany, 1919-60

Curative asylum, custodial hospital: the South Carolina lunatic asylum and state hospital, 1828-1920

The state, family, and the insane in Japan, 1900-45

The limits of psychiatric reform in Argentina, 1890-1946

Becoming mad in revolutionary Mexico: mentally ill patients at the General Insane Asylum, Mexico, 1910-30

Psychiatry and confinement in India

Confinements and colonialism in Nigeria

'Ireland's crowded madhouses': the institutional confinement of the insane in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Ireland

The administration of insanity in England, 1800-70

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