Home
»
Undertaker of the Mind
18th century english history
18th century health care
18th century mental institutions
A01=Andrew Scull
A01=Jonathan Andrews
alexander cruden
assassin
asylum
Author_Andrew Scull
Author_Jonathan Andrews
bedlam
bethlem hospital
Category=DNBH
Category=MBPK
Category=NHT
celebrity
earl of orford
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
great britain
insanity
john monro
king george iii
london
lunacy
mad doctoring
madness
margaret nicholson
medical professionals
medical psychology
mental illness
physician
private madhouse
psychology
public hospitals
public institution for the insane
the adventures of alexander the corrector
treatment of madness
Product details
- ISBN 9780520231511
- Weight: 771g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 27 Nov 2001
- Publisher: University of California Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
Delivery/Collection within 10-20 working days
Our Delivery Time Frames Explained
2-4 Working Days: Available in-stock
10-20 Working Days: On Backorder
Will Deliver When Available: On Pre-Order or Reprinting
We ship your order once all items have arrived at our warehouse and are processed. Need those 2-4 day shipping items sooner? Just place a separate order for them!
As visiting physician to Bethlem Hospital, the archetypal 'Bedlam' and Britain's first and (for hundreds of years) only public institution for the insane, Dr. John Monro (1715-1791) was a celebrity in his own day. Jonathan Andrews and Andrew Scull call him a 'connoisseur of insanity, this high priest of the trade in lunacy'. Although the basics of his life and career are well known, this study is the first to explore in depth Monro's colorful and contentious milieu. Mad-doctoring grew into a recognized, if not entirely respectable, profession during the eighteenth century, and besides being affiliated with public hospitals, Monro and other mad-doctors became entrepreneurs and owners of private madhouses and were consulted by the rich and famous. Monro's close social connections with members of the aristocracy and gentry, as well as with medical professionals, politicians, and divines, guaranteed him a significant place in the social, political, cultural, and intellectual worlds of his time.
Andrews and Scull draw on an astonishing array of visual materials and verbal sources that include the diaries, family papers, and correspondence of some of England's wealthiest and best-connected citizens. The book is also distinctive in the coverage it affords to individual case histories of Monro's patients, including such prominent contemporary figures as the Earls Ferrers and Orford, the religious 'enthusiast' Alexander Cruden, and the 'mad' King George III, as well as his crazy would-be assassin, Margaret Nicholson. What the authors make clear is that Monro, a serious physician neither reactionary nor enlightened in his methods, was the outright epitome of the mad-trade as it existed then, esteemed in some quarters and ridiculed in others. The fifty illustrations, expertly annotated and integrated with the text, will be a revelation to many readers.
Jonathan Andrews is Senior Lecturer in the School of Humanities, Oxford Brookes University. His publications include The History of Bethlem (1997) and "They're in the Trade of Lunacy" (1998). Andrew Scull, author of Social Order/Mental Disorder (California, 1989; 1992) and The Most Solitary of Afflictions (1993), among other books, is Professor of Sociology and Science Studies at the University of California, San Diego.
Qty: