Victorian Lunacy : Richard M. Bucke and the Practice of Late Nineteenth-Century Psychiatry

Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, first edition, 1986. Cloth, 8vo, 24 cm,. xvi, 207 pp, ills. From the blurb - "Using the career of Richard M. Bucke at the London Asylum in Canada as its focus, this book explores the theory and practice of late nineteenth-century psychiatry. The study describes the medical context that nurtured Victorian alienists, while their professional sphere - the asylum - is considered as an autonomous professional social community, often at odds with the intentions of its ostensible masters. Psychiatric theory is discussed less as an objective body of biomedical knowledge than as a product of the social turmoil that characterized the final decades of the nineteenth century. The treatment tactics adopted by alienists are seen as arising from the professional aspirations and fears associated with those who practiced the fragile specialty of psychological medicine. Unlike many other studies of nineteenth century psychiatry, this book does not restrict itself to a single national experience, but adopts an explicitly Anglo-American perspective. Rather than restricting attention to political or institutional factors, it accords major significance to the role of ideas in determining the character of late-Victorian psychiatry. A few corrections to the index marked in manuscript, otherwise Very Good in Very Good dustwrapper. Laid in is an article reprinted from The Canadian Medical Association Journal 91, pp 385-391, August 22, 1964: 'Richard Maurice Bucke, M.D., 1837-1902 A Pioneer of Scientific Psychiatry' by Cyril Greenland.