Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gvvz8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T17:24:43.504Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

John Conolly and the treatment of mental illness in early Victorian England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Camilla M. Haw
Camilla M. Haw*
Affiliation:
St Mary Abbots Hospital, London W8
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

This year, 1989, marks the 150th anniversary of the abolition of mechanical restraints at the Hanwell Asylum. It was, of course, John Conolly who carried out this large-scale experiment in the application of non-restraint at Hanwell. He was in charge of the diagnosis and treatment of the 800-odd pauper lunatics in this, the largest of the county asylums. Most of his patients had been insane for many years before their admission to Hanwell from the parish workhouses. The prospects of curing them were slim: Hanwell had the second lowest cure rate among the county asylums, a meagre 6% for the period 1835–1845 (Conolly, 1847).

Type
Sketches from the History of Psychiatry
Information
Psychiatric Bulletin , Volume 13 , Issue 8 , August 1989 , pp. 440 - 444
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1989

References

Conolly, J. (1830) An Inquiry Concerning the Indications of Insanity. Reprinted with an introduction by Hunter, R. & MacAlpine, I. (1964). London: Dawsons. pp 17, 411, 424, 480.Google Scholar
Conolly, J. (1847) The Construction and Government of Lunatic Asylums. Reprinted with an introduction by Hunter, R. & MacAlpine, I. (1968). London: Dawsons. pp 9, 151.Google Scholar
Conolly, J. (1846) Clinical lectures on the principal forms of insanity. The Lancet, pp 55, 110, 113.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Conolly, J. Treatment of the Insane without Mechanical Restraints. Reprinted with an introduction by Hunter, R. & MacAlpine, I. London: Dawsons.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Esquirol, E. (1845) Mental Maladies. A treatise on Insanity. Translated with additions by Hunt, E. K. Reprinted 1965. New York: Hafner. pp 84, 86, 87.Google Scholar
Fourth Report of the Resident Physician at the Hanwell Asylum, 1842. p 42.Google Scholar
Hill, R. G. (1838) Total Abolition of Personal Restraints in the Treatment of the Insane. A Lecture. London: Simpkin, Marshall & Co.Google Scholar
Illustrated London News, 20 May 1843; 15 January 1848.Google Scholar
Male Casebook, 1850–1854. Greater London Record Office. p 30.Google Scholar
Maudsley, H. (1866) Memoir of the late John Conolly. Journal of Mental Science, 12, 151–174.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morison, A. (1828) Cases of mental disease, with practical observations… for the use of students. In Three Hundred Years of Psychiatry (eds. R. Hunter & A. MacAlpine) (1963). Oxford University Press. p 600.Google Scholar
Report of the Resident Physician at the Hanwell Asylum, (1840). pp 30, 62, 65, 66, 69, 75.Google Scholar
Reports of the Resident Physicians at Hanwell (1842). p 83.Google Scholar
Rush, B. (1812) Medical Inquiries and Observations upon the Diseases of the Mind. Reprinted with an introduction by Wortis, S. B. (1962). New York: Hafner.Google Scholar
Scull, A. (1985) A Victorian alienist. In The Anatomy of Madness, vol. 2, (eds. W. F. Bynum, R. Porter & M. Shepherd) London: Tavistock.Google Scholar
The Times, 18 November 1840, p 6; 8 December 1841, p 3.Google Scholar
Tuke, S. (1813) Description of the Retreat. Reprinted 1964 with an introduction by Hunter, R. & MacAlpine, A. London: Dawsons.Google Scholar
Submit a response

eLetters

No eLetters have been published for this article.