Manual of Lunacy
A Handbook Relating to the Legal Care and Treatment of the Insane in the Public and Private Asylums of Great Britain, Ireland, United States of America, and the Continent

Published in 1874, an enlightening yet disturbing insight into the treatment of the mentally ill in the late nineteenth century.

Lyttleton Stewart Forbes Winslow (Author), Forbes Winslow (Preface by)

9781108063494, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 20 March 2014

472 pages
21.6 x 14 x 2.7 cm, 0.6 kg

A controversial psychiatrist, Lyttleton Stewart Forbes Winslow (1844–1913) grew up around the lunatic asylums run by his father, Forbes B. Winslow, who was a specialist in the treatment of mental illness, establishing also medical grounds for the plea of insanity in criminal defence. Lyttleton spent much of his own medical career attempting to show the courts that crime and alcoholism were linked to mental illness, though he later gained notoriety for his amateur detective work: he claimed to know the identity of Jack the Ripper. Published in 1874, this book examines, often through case descriptions, the legal framework within which the mentally ill were managed, and comparisons are made with the status quo elsewhere in the world. It is an enlightening but often disturbing insight into the institutional treatment of mental illness in the late nineteenth century.

Preface
1. History of lunacy legislation
2. Present state of lunacy in England and Wales
3. Epitome of the Lunacy Act
4. On the management of asylums and licensed houses
5. Private patients
6. Single patients confined in unlicensed private houses
7. Pauper lunatics
8. Commissions in lunacy and chancery lunatics
9. St Luke's and Bethlehem hospitals for lunatics
10. Liabilities incurred by those concerned in the confinement of persons alleged to be insane
11. Lunacy in Scotland
12. Lunacy in Ireland
13. Lunacy in France
14. Lunacy in Belgium
15. Lunacy in Germany
16. Lunacy in the United States of America
17. Lunacy in Russia
18. Recent lunacy statistics and instructions
19. Definitions and explanation of terms
Appendices
Index.

Subject Areas: History of medicine [MBX]