This article examines alienist explanations for fracture among British asylum patients in the late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries. A series of deaths in asylums came to light in the 1870s which, in placing the blame for such incidents on asylum staff, called for a response from the psychiatric profession. This response drew upon other medical fields and employed novel pathological techniques to explain why fractures occurred among the insane, in many cases aligning bone fragility with particular forms of insanity (namely, General Paralysis of the Insane). Although such research aimed to provide a medical explanation for the `fracture death', it also called into question the value of pathological research and the utility of quantitative measurement in understanding mental disease.
...MoreDescription A study of fractures among British asylum patients in the late 19th to early 20th centuries.
Similar Citations
Article
Kragh, Jesper Vaczy;
(2010)
Malaria Fever Therapy for General Paralysis of the Insane in Denmark
(/isis/citation/CBB001232235/)
Article
Boyce, Niall;
(2012)
A Secret History
(/isis/citation/CBB001200870/)
Book
David Scrimgeour;
(2015)
Proper People: Early Asylum Life in the Words of Those Who Were There
(/isis/citation/CBB325630550/)
Thesis
Carpenter, D T;
(cited 2010)
Above All a Patient Should Never Be Terrified: An Examination of Mental Health Care and Treatment in Hampshire 1845--1914
(/isis/citation/CBB001567243/)
Book
Reaume, Geoffrey;
(2000)
Remembrance of Patients Past: Patient Life at the Toronto Hospital for the Insane, 1770-1940
(/isis/citation/CBB000101654/)
Article
Hutchison, Iain;
(2011)
Institutionalization of Mentally-Impaired Children in Scotland, c.1855--1914
(/isis/citation/CBB001232201/)
Article
Tatjana Buklijas;
(2017)
The laboratory and the asylum: Francis Walker Mott and the pathological laboratory at London County Council Lunatic Asylum, Claybury, Essex (1895–1916)
(/isis/citation/CBB181490050/)
Book
Melling, Joseph;
Forsythe, Bill;
(2006)
The Politics of Madness: The State, Insanity and Society in England, 1845--1914
(/isis/citation/CBB000774000/)
Article
Murray, Heather;
(2014)
“My Place Was Set At The Terrible Feast”: The Meanings of the “Anti-Psychiatry” Movement and Responses in the United States, 1970s--1990s
(/isis/citation/CBB001202132/)
Article
Jones, Edgar;
Rahman, Shahina;
(2008)
Framing Mental Illness, 1923--1939: The Maudsley Hospital and Its Patients
(/isis/citation/CBB000774303/)
Article
Beyer, Christof;
(2012)
Eine Patientenperspektive in der Psychiatrie zwischen Krankheit, Normalisierung und Normalität (1921--1937)
(/isis/citation/CBB001421896/)
Article
Thifault, Marie-Claude;
(2010)
Les stéréotypes sexuels de l'enfermement asilaire au Québec, au tournant du 20e siècle
(/isis/citation/CBB001024900/)
Book
Diana Peschier;
(2019)
Lost Souls: Women, Religion and Mental Illness in the Victorian Asylum
(/isis/citation/CBB291963494/)
Article
Artvinli, Fatih;
(2012)
Topta Bimarhanesi Sertabibi Dr. Avram de Castro: Bir Biyo-bibliyografi
(/isis/citation/CBB001320508/)
Article
Motlatsi Thabane;
(2021)
Public mental health care in colonial Lesotho: themes emerging from archival material, 1918–35
(/isis/citation/CBB263655708/)
Book
Coleborne, Catharine;
(2010)
Madness in the Family: Insanity and Institutions in the Australasian Colonial World, 1860--1914
(/isis/citation/CBB001031295/)
Article
Annacarla Valeriano;
(2019)
Voci dalle cartelle. Alcune linee di ricerca dall’archivio storico del manicomio Sant’Antonio abate di Teramo
(/isis/citation/CBB521766391/)
Article
Getz, Lynne M.;
(2009)
“A Strong Man of Large Human Sympathy”: Dr. Patrick L. Murphy and the Challenges of Nineteenth-Century Asylum Psychiatry in North Carolina
(/isis/citation/CBB001030783/)
Article
Jonathan Andrews;
Chris Philo;
(2017)
James Frame’s The Philosophy of Insanity (1860)
(/isis/citation/CBB313587958/)
Article
Anna Jamieson;
(2021)
"Comforts in Her Calamity": Shopping and Consumption in the Late Eighteenth-Century Private Madhouse
(/isis/citation/CBB812067911/)
Be the first to comment!