Undertaker of the Mind: John Monro and Mad-Doctoring in Eighteenth-Century EnglandAs 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. |
Contents
3 | |
5 | |
15 | |
22 | |
HOW TO TREAT A BEDLAMITE | 30 |
The Real Use of Discussing Madness The Great Lunacy Debate | 45 |
JOHN MONRO WILLIAM BATTIE AND ST LUKES HOSPITAL FOR LUNATICS | 47 |
A VERY PUBLIC QUARREL | 54 |
LUNACY AND THE MONEYED CLASSES | 121 |
THE MADNESS OF A WHIG GRANDEE | 125 |
HOW TO TREAT A LORD | 133 |
LORD ORFORD RECOVERS HIS WITS AND LOSES THEM AGAIN | 141 |
Mansions of Misery MadDoctors and the MadTrade | 145 |
THE WIDER MARKET FOR THE MADBUSINESS | 147 |
JOHN MONRO AND THE PRIVATE MADBUSINESS | 162 |
FOR THE BEST AND THE WORST PURPOSES? MONRO MADHOUSES AND FALSE CONFINEMENT | 172 |
JUDGING A DEBATE | 61 |
A CAUTIOUS RAPPROCHEMENT | 72 |
Madness in Their Methodism Religious Enthusiasm the MadDoctors and the Case of Alexander Cruden | 75 |
THE MONROS AND METHODICAL MADNESS | 77 |
ALEXANDER THE CORRECTOR AND THE MONROS | 95 |
THE MADMAN AND HIS MADDOCTORS | 109 |
CRUDENS FINAL CALL FROM GOD | 113 |
A LAST JUDGMENT OF CRUDENS CASE | 114 |
Mad as a Lord Monro and the Case of the Earl of Orford | 119 |
MONRO BECOMES PART OF THE BUSINESS | 181 |
Murder Most Foul Madness Most High The Courtroom the Stateroom and the Misty Summits of the MadDoctors Expertise | 193 |
THE FEROCIOUS EARL FERRERS | 195 |
AND STATE COMMITTALS TO BETHLEM | 217 |
THE ROYAL MALADY AND THE END OF MONROS CAREER | 256 |
Notes | 267 |
Select Bibliography | 347 |
359 | |
Other editions - View all
Undertaker of the Mind: John Monro and Mad-doctoring in Eighteenth-century ... Jonathan Andrews,Andrew T. Scull No preview available - 2001 |
Common terms and phrases
Alexander Cruden alleged Andrews apothecary April attempt attended Battie's Treatise BCGM Bedlam Bethlem Bethlem Hospital Bethnal Green British Brooke House BSCM Cambridge century claimed College of Physicians committee contemporary Corrector court cure death disorder doctors Earl Ferrers eighteenth eighteenth-century England Engraving European Magazine evidence false confinement father Ferrers's Fiske George George III governors History Horace Walpole hospital Hoxton Hunter and Macalpine HW to Mann Ibid insanity James Monro John Monro John's Jonathan keeper kind permission king King's Lady's Magazine London Lord Lord Mansfield Luke's lunatic Mad-Business mad-doctor madhouse Margaret Nicholson Medicine ment mental Methodists Miles's nephew Oxford Pargeter patients person physician Plot Investigated practice practitioners Printed private madhouses Psychiatry religious Remarks Reproduced by kind Richard Routledge Roy Porter Royal Scull seems servants social Thomas Monro tion Trade in Lunacy treatment trial University Press visiting Walpole's Whitefield William Battie
Popular passages
Page 13 - Here pleased behold her mighty wings outspread To hatch a new Saturnian age of lead. Close to those walls where Folly holds her throne, And laughs to think Monro would take her down, Where o'er the gates, by his famed father's hand, Great Cibber's brazen, brainless brothers stand; One cell there is, conceal'd from vulgar eye, The cave of Poverty and Poetry.
References to this book
Crisis, Absolutism, Revolution: Europe and the World, 1648-1789 Raymond Birn No preview available - 2005 |