Puerperal insanity has been described as a nineteenth-century diagnosis, entrenched in contemporary expectations of proper womanly behaviour. Drawing on detailed study of establishment registers and patient case notes, this paper examines the puerperal insanity diagnosis at Dundee Lunatic Asylum between 1820 and 1860. In particular, the study aims to consider whether the class or social status of the patients had a bearing on how their conditions were perceived and rationalized, and how far the puerperal insanity diagnosis, coloured by the values assigned to it by the medical officers, may have been reserved for some women and not for others. This examination of the diagnosis in a Scottish community, suggesting a contrast in the way that middle-class and working-class women were diagnosed at Dundee, engages with and expands on work on puerperal insanity elsewhere.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Book
Davis, Gayle;
(2008)
“The Cruel Madness of Love”: Sex, Syphilis and Psychiatry in Scotland, 1880--1930
(/isis/citation/CBB000933042/)
Article
Slijkhuis, Jessica;
Oosterhuis, Harry;
(2014)
Cadaver Brains and Excesses in Baccho and Venere: Dementia Paralytica in Dutch Psychiatry (1870--1920)
(/isis/citation/CBB001420765/)
Book
Diana Peschier;
(2019)
Lost Souls: Women, Religion and Mental Illness in the Victorian Asylum
(/isis/citation/CBB291963494/)
Article
Jonathan Andrews;
Chris Philo;
(2017)
James Frame’s The Philosophy of Insanity (1860)
(/isis/citation/CBB313587958/)
Article
Malin Appelquist;
Louise Brådvik;
Marie Åsberg;
(2018)
Mental illness in Sweden (1896–1905) reflected through case records from a local general hospital
(/isis/citation/CBB065288064/)
Book
Andrews, Jonathan;
Digby, Anne;
(2004)
Sex and Seclusion, Class and Custody: Perspectives on Gender and Class in the History of British and Irish Psychiatry
(/isis/citation/CBB000771248/)
Article
Sharlene D Walbaum;
(2019)
The invisible woman: Susan Carnegie and Montrose Lunatic Asylum
(/isis/citation/CBB650430833/)
Article
Hutchison, Iain;
(2011)
Institutionalization of Mentally-Impaired Children in Scotland, c.1855--1914
(/isis/citation/CBB001232201/)
Chapter
Suzuki, Akihito;
(2007)
Lunacy and Labouring Men: Narratives of Male Vulnerability in Mid-Victorian London
(/isis/citation/CBB000773391/)
Article
Meier, Marietta;
(2009)
Creating Order: A Quantitative Analysis of Psychiatric Practice at the Swiss Mental Institutions of Burghölzli and Rheinau between 1870 and 1970
(/isis/citation/CBB000932507/)
Article
Hewitt, Jessie;
(2015)
Women Working “Amidst the Mad”: Domesticity as Psychiatric Treatment in Nineteenth-Century Paris
(/isis/citation/CBB001422233/)
Article
Sheila Dickson;
(2018)
Rotation therapy for maniacs, melancholics and idiots: theory, practice and perception in European medical and literary case histories
(/isis/citation/CBB641233436/)
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
Steven J. Taylor;
(2017)
‘She Was Frightened While Pregnant by a Monkey at the Zoo’: Constructing the Mentally-imperfect Child in Nineteenth-century England
(/isis/citation/CBB408039612/)
Book
Melling, Joseph;
Forsythe, Bill;
(1999)
Insanity, Institutions and Society, 1800-1914: A Social History of Madness in Comparative Perspective
(/isis/citation/CBB000111209/)
Book
Jonathan M. Metzl;
(2020)
Étouffer la révolte: La psychiatrie contre les Civils Rights, une histoire du contrôle social
(/isis/citation/CBB840020850/)
Thesis
Reich, Rebecca;
(2010)
Thinking Differently: Psychiatry, Literature and Dissent in the Late Soviet Period
(/isis/citation/CBB001567224/)
Article
Chris Philo;
Jonathan Andrews;
(2017)
Introduction: histories of asylums, insanity and psychiatry in Scotland
(/isis/citation/CBB636331729/)
Article
Alice Street;
(December 2011)
Artefacts of not-knowing: The medical record, the diagnosis and the production of uncertainty in Papua New Guinean biomedicine
(/isis/citation/CBB480850883/)
Book
Susannah Cahalan;
(2019)
The Great Pretender: The Undercover Mission That Changed Our Understanding of Madness
(/isis/citation/CBB484312893/)
Be the first to comment!