Madmen : A Social History of Mad-houses, Mad-doctors and Lunatics, Paperback / softback Book

Madmen : A Social History of Mad-houses, Mad-doctors and Lunatics Paperback / softback

Paperback / softback

Out of Stock - We are unable to provide an estimated availability date for this product
  • Information

Description

What was it like to be insane in the Georgian England of Mary Wollstonecraft and Coleridge (himself afflicted with madness?) How were our eighteenth-century ancestors confined and how were they treated by the fledgling psychiatric 'profession'?

Indeed, how was the most famous mad person of the century - Shelley's 'old, mad, blind, despised king' George III - treated before his final descent into senility in 1808?Best-selling popular historian Roy Porter looks at the bizarre and savage practices of mad-doctors treating those afflicted by 'manias', ranging from huge doses of opium, blood-letting and cold-water immersion to beatings, confinement in cages and blistering.

The author reveals how Bethlem - the London asylum created to care for the capital's mentally sick - was riddled with sadism and embezzlement, and if that wasn't dehumanising enough, jeering, ogling sightseers were permitted entry - for a fee of course.

Information

Other Formats

Save 10%

£12.99

£11.57

Out of Stock - We are unable to provide an estimated availability date for this product
Add to Basket
Sign in to add to wishlist

Information