Mind-Forg’d Manacles

"I could have chosen any book by Porter, but this one is my favourite. Roy Porter died far too young. He was the most exuberant man, and the generosity and excitement that he had in everyday life enthused all his books. He was meticulous in his research, and he wrote the most fantastically lucid prose. It was the most elegant stuff, and he was a historian who really taught me how to think. Yes. The book is all about notions of what insanity is, how we viewed it and what the treatments were. For example there was a category called moral insanity, which is obviously much more to do with how we policed people’s behaviour than any pathological condition. So this is a book about perception as well. It was all about behaviour; some behaviours didn’t necessarily fit and so were deemed “mad”. “There was a category called moral insanity, which is obviously much more to do with how we policed people’s behaviour than any pathological condition.” Some physicians were more enlightened than others, but there wasn’t much they could do. The church also had quite a lot to say about the wages of sin, the uncontrollable ways in which some people acted and how they should be treated. For the most part, in the earlier period, they locked the insane away in “shit, straw and stench”. Many people just didn’t have the money for the private asylums or medical treatments available, so they were confined in dreadful conditions, shackled and tormented, bled and blistered. Yes, it is still going on. And up until the 18th century, people visited Bedlam for a day out to see the mad people. There is still a great deal of stigma attached to mental illness. I think people are pilloried in the press in one way or another, regardless of how whatever it is that has happened to them comes to light. But of course, now there are more sophisticated therapies and drug treatments, rather than the traditional “remedies” and sedatives of opiates and alcohol. In the UK, that all stems from when Margaret Thatcher came to power, and so-called “care in the community”. But now you see a great many more people on the streets who would have been in caring institutions. “Care in the community” is a bit like David Cameron’s “big society” – a great idea in theory but problematic to put into practice. One last comment on Porter. I read him as an undergraduate and I still re-read his books. Many of the history books I read as a student I wanted to throw across the room, but Porter’s books I wanted to take to bed with me. It really is great if you find an historian who is so engaging that they make you want to find out more and read more – even though the subject could seem quite dry. So in a subject like the history of medicine, which is instantly related to the personal, Porter is an excellent guide."