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Mental Health History Timeline
A mental health history including asylum and community care periods, with links to Andrew Roberts' book on the Lunacy Commission and other mental health writings, and the asylums index and word history. Centred on England and Wales, it reaches out to the rest of the world with links to the general timeline of science and society, America timeline, crime timeline, and the (embryo) sunrise, earthcor, and local London timelines. Seeks to include views from mental illness and learning disability (consumers, patients, users, clients) along with views on madness and disability.
Also bibliographies and biographies of commissioners
Also bibliographies and biographies of commissioners
Pre-history
Katherine Darton's Notes of the history of mental health care
(on the MIND website) begins in 10,000 BC. She says "in prehistoric times there was, as far as historians can tell, no division between medicine, magic and religion." History of the Conceptualizations of Mental Illness by Jessie in Japan begins in "prehistoric times"
History of Mental Illness at the University of Derby begins some 10,000 years ago with trepanning - possibly to let evil spirits out, but this was before written records.
A history of Mental Health, by an unknown nursing student (1992), begins in "primitive times".
(on the MIND website) begins in 10,000 BC. She says "in prehistoric times there was, as far as historians can tell, no division between medicine, magic and religion." History of the Conceptualizations of Mental Illness by Jessie in Japan begins in "prehistoric times"
History of Mental Illness at the University of Derby begins some 10,000 years ago with trepanning - possibly to let evil spirits out, but this was before written records.
A history of Mental Health, by an unknown nursing student (1992), begins in "primitive times".
The Disability Social History Project's
Disability Social History Timeline begins in 3,500 BC with an account of the fitting of an artificial limb the Rig-Veda (sacred poem of India written in Sanskrit between 3500 and 1800 B.C. It then jumps to 355 BC The Society of Laingian Studies' Timeline in the treatment of Madness begins in 3,100BC when "Menes, the founder of the 1st Dynasty writes The Secret Book of the Heart, describing 3 kinds of healers, the physician, the priest and the sorcerer".
Ed Brown's annotated cases at Brown Medical School
begins with the feigned madness of David who became king of the Jews (9th century BC)
Nebuchadnezzar or Nabonidus (whichever), in the 6th century BC,
is the earliest in <fo nt="" color="FF00FF">Joan's mad monarchs series</fo>
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Indian medicine
S N Kothare and Sanjay A Pai's chapter on Evolution of Psychology and Psychiatry discusses Ayurveda medicine which derives from the compendiums of Sushruta Samhita and Charaka [External links to Wikipedia], which date back to about the 6th century BC
Ancient Greece and Rome
355BC Aristotle said those "born deaf become senseless and incapable of reason." (Disability Timeline)
Galen, Greek physician
AD 129 Galen born in Pergamum, in what is now Turkey. He died about AD 216. His massive writings on medicine included the theory of the humours or body fluids (like blood) whose preponderance had a marked affect on a person's health and personality. (See melancholy).
External link: Hospitals in Islamic History by Dr Hossam Arafa "The first known hospital in Islam was built in Damascus in 706AD". Social Science History. See also origin of word hospital. Bagdhad Hospital after 750. Al-Fustat Hospital, Cairo, 872.
Disability Social History Timeline begins in 3,500 BC with an account of the fitting of an artificial limb the Rig-Veda (sacred poem of India written in Sanskrit between 3500 and 1800 B.C. It then jumps to 355 BC The Society of Laingian Studies' Timeline in the treatment of Madness begins in 3,100BC when "Menes, the founder of the 1st Dynasty writes The Secret Book of the Heart, describing 3 kinds of healers, the physician, the priest and the sorcerer".
Ed Brown's annotated cases at Brown Medical School
begins with the feigned madness of David who became king of the Jews (9th century BC)
Nebuchadnezzar or Nabonidus (whichever), in the 6th century BC,
is the earliest in <fo nt="" color="FF00FF">Joan's mad monarchs series</fo>
<fo nt="" color="FF00FF"></fo>
Indian medicine
S N Kothare and Sanjay A Pai's chapter on Evolution of Psychology and Psychiatry discusses Ayurveda medicine which derives from the compendiums of Sushruta Samhita and Charaka [External links to Wikipedia], which date back to about the 6th century BC
Ancient Greece and Rome
Larry Merkel's History of Psychiatry, available from his University of Virginia seminars as a pdf file begins with a discussion of pre-classical (Egyptian, Middle-Eastern, Judaic) influences on classical Greek and Roman theory and practice.
Drama Therapy and Psychodrama History begins with plays of Sophocles in 404BC
Socrates (in Plato's The Republic) recommends that "the offspring of the inferior, or of the better when they chance to be deformed, will be put away in some mysterious, unknown place, as they should be" Drama Therapy and Psychodrama History begins with plays of Sophocles in 404BC
355BC Aristotle said those "born deaf become senseless and incapable of reason." (Disability Timeline)
Galen, Greek physician
AD 129 Galen born in Pergamum, in what is now Turkey. He died about AD 216. His massive writings on medicine included the theory of the humours or body fluids (like blood) whose preponderance had a marked affect on a person's health and personality. (See melancholy).
External link: Hospitals in Islamic History by Dr Hossam Arafa "The first known hospital in Islam was built in Damascus in 706AD". Social Science History. See also origin of word hospital. Bagdhad Hospital after 750. Al-Fustat Hospital, Cairo, 872.
European hospitals heritage (PAPHE) chronology begins in 912
Michael Warren's health in Britain chronology
begins in 1066
Michael Warren's health in Britain chronology
begins in 1066
From the late 11th century, Hunain ibn Ishaq's Arabic translations of Galen, commentaries by Arab physicians, and sometimes the original Greek, were translated into Latin. These became the basis of medical education in the European universities that started in the late 12th century
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World War Part One: Science Time Line 1914- 1919
The <!--http://www.gwpda.org/--> World War One Document Archives' <!-- http://www.gwpda.org/medical/medtitle.htm --> medical titles on <!-- http://www.gwpda.org/medical/medindex.htm#PSYCHIATRY here--> psychiatry include <!-- http://www.gwpda.org/medical/shshock/index.htm here--> Shell Shock and its Lessons by Grafton Elliot Smith and Tom Hatherley Pear. Manchester University Press, 1917.
Freud and War Neurosis (A Freud Museum link)
The Oxford book of Twentieth Century Words lists shell-shock from 1915, defining it as "a severe neurosis originating in trauma suffered under fire.
A term particularly associated with World War 1, in which soldiers on the Western Front were subjected to a seemingly incessant barrage of shell-fire". It compares it with bomb-happy (1943) in the second world war. But shell-shock was used by the medical profession, whereas bomb-happy was colloquial. (See later rejection of shell-shock as a medical term)
<table align="full" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"><tbody><tr align="left" valign="middle"><td>1916 </td> <td align="right"> </td> </tr> </tbody></table>
Publication of the major volume of Charlotte Mew's poetry (The Farmer's Bride) whose dialogues with insanity included this in On the Asylum Road
<table align="full" border="1" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" width="100%"> <tbody><tr align="left" valign="middle"> <td> Emil Kraepelin's Hundert Jahre Psychiatrie : ein Beitrag zur Geschichte menschlicher Gesittung [One Hundred Years of Psychiatry: A contribution to the history of human civilisation], written 1917, published in Berlin by Springer in 1918. 115 pages, illustrated. This was translated into English by Wade Buskin and published in 1962 as One Hundred Years of Psychiatry. The translation contains a short epilogue by H. Peter Laqueur, MD, reflecting on the years 1917-1962. Kraepelin wrote "in Germany in the middle of a raging war" (p.154). A single paragraph, towards the end of the book, praises chemicals in the control of patient behaviour (after "protracted baths")
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World War Part One: Science Time Line 1914- 1919
Bert Roberts signed up in the Royal Army Medical Corps very early in hostilities. His fiancee, Lily McKenzie, often saw the postman as she left for work in the morning. There were no letterboxes. He had to knock to deliver the letters. One morning he looked green and he told her he was close to turning his job in: "They have gone over the top at Gallipoli". His hand held a bundle of brown envelopes containing the official messages of the dead, the missing and the injured to deliver to Dickenson Street, Warrington. [British landings at Gallipoli were on 25.4.1915. The British withdrew 9.1.1916.]
The twentieth century's first encounter with mass slaughter on a world wide scale was traumatic.The <!--http://www.gwpda.org/--> World War One Document Archives' <!-- http://www.gwpda.org/medical/medtitle.htm --> medical titles on <!-- http://www.gwpda.org/medical/medindex.htm#PSYCHIATRY here--> psychiatry include <!-- http://www.gwpda.org/medical/shshock/index.htm here--> Shell Shock and its Lessons by Grafton Elliot Smith and Tom Hatherley Pear. Manchester University Press, 1917.
Freud and War Neurosis (A Freud Museum link)
The Oxford book of Twentieth Century Words lists shell-shock from 1915, defining it as "a severe neurosis originating in trauma suffered under fire.
A term particularly associated with World War 1, in which soldiers on the Western Front were subjected to a seemingly incessant barrage of shell-fire". It compares it with bomb-happy (1943) in the second world war. But shell-shock was used by the medical profession, whereas bomb-happy was colloquial. (See later rejection of shell-shock as a medical term)
<table align="full" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"><tbody><tr align="left" valign="middle"><td>1916 </td> <td align="right"> </td> </tr> </tbody></table>
Publication of the major volume of Charlotte Mew's poetry (The Farmer's Bride) whose dialogues with insanity included this in On the Asylum Road
"Theirs is the house whose windows...
Are made of darkly stained or clouded glass:
...
The saddest crowd that you will ever pass. But still we merry town or village folk
Throw to their scattered stare a kindly grin,
And think no shame to stop and crack a joke
With the incarnate wages of man's sin."
The successful identification of General Paralysis of the Insane as an end product of syphilis raised hopes of finding an organic cause for all mental illnesses (See Frederick Mott). The poem suggests that it also re-inforced belief in degeneration theory as the overall causal explanation. Are made of darkly stained or clouded glass:
...
The saddest crowd that you will ever pass. But still we merry town or village folk
Throw to their scattered stare a kindly grin,
And think no shame to stop and crack a joke
With the incarnate wages of man's sin."
<table align="full" border="1" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" width="100%"> <tbody><tr align="left" valign="middle"> <td> Emil Kraepelin's Hundert Jahre Psychiatrie : ein Beitrag zur Geschichte menschlicher Gesittung [One Hundred Years of Psychiatry: A contribution to the history of human civilisation], written 1917, published in Berlin by Springer in 1918. 115 pages, illustrated. This was translated into English by Wade Buskin and published in 1962 as One Hundred Years of Psychiatry. The translation contains a short epilogue by H. Peter Laqueur, MD, reflecting on the years 1917-1962. Kraepelin wrote "in Germany in the middle of a raging war" (p.154). A single paragraph, towards the end of the book, praises chemicals in the control of patient behaviour (after "protracted baths")
"We should not fail to note that the solution of many difficulties faced by the older doctors is the contribution of the chemical industry which in the last decade has created an imposing list of new soporifics and sedatives. The first sedative was chloral hydrate, recommended by Liebreich. Almost every other drug with similar effects was first manufactured and administered in Germany. Such agents are rightly considered expedients, however, and their use opens the door to many dangers. Still, for countless patients they are an immeasurable blessing, and they are mainly responsible for bringing the quiet atmosphere of the hospital into the wards fro the insane and removing much of the horror that still feeds the imagination of the lay public" (pages 143-144)
</td> </tr> </tbody></table> influenza epidemic "flu pandemic" 
Said to have killed 250,000 people in the United Kingdom and 40 million people world wide. (And there were plenty of other things killing people at this time - See Charlotte's web) Encephalitis lethargica followed the flu pandemic. This affected up to five million people worldwide. One third died quickly, one third recovered, the remainder bore the aftereffects for years or decades. Encephalitis lethargica "vanished" in 1928. - External links: Encephalitis lethargica: BBC - History of narcolepsy - Can the flue cause Parkinson's Disease? - Lancet 1956
Said to have killed 250,000 people in the United Kingdom and 40 million people world wide. (And there were plenty of other things killing people at this time - See Charlotte's web) Encephalitis lethargica followed the flu pandemic. This affected up to five million people worldwide. One third died quickly, one third recovered, the remainder bore the aftereffects for years or decades. Encephalitis lethargica "vanished" in 1928. - External links: Encephalitis lethargica: BBC - History of narcolepsy - Can the flue cause Parkinson's Disease? - Lancet 1956