kleenexwoman | Victorian Madness

On Mental Illness In Victorian Society

INTRODUCTION

The subject of madness was a compelling one in Victorian society. The science of psychology was becoming separated from philosophy, brought into the realms of empirical science by pioneers such as Wilhelm Wundt, and popularized (later on) by figures like Sigmund Freud. Many medical doctors became “alienists” in order to turn their inquiries to the question of mental illness, and theories as to the cause and proper treatment thereof abounded in the annals of medical science.

SOME COMMON THEORIES

Moral insanity

--HOW IT WORKED: Originally devised and popularized by John Connolly in his book Passion and Reason, the theory of “moral insanity” suggested that there was no real medical difference between sanity and insanity, and that the dividing line lay in that of mental willpower, of the ability to withstand and discard disturbing thoughts and degenerate impulses.

--CAUSED BY/LED TO: Later proponents of this view saw a connection between lack of mental willpower and a tendency towards debauchery, excess, indecency, and drunkenness. Experts often disagreed on whether the debauchery and excess sapped the mental willpower, or whether the lack of willpower led to the debauchery and excess in the first place.

--TREATMENT: Originally, asylums had been mere madhouses, with their inmates “shut up in dens littered with straw, exhibited for money, and made to growl and roar for the diversion of the spectators who had paid their fee.” (Wynter, 1857). The idea that the mad could actually be cured led to great changes in the management of asylums. Upon his appointment to the Middlesex Asylum in 1839, Connolly abolished all use of constraints such as leg-irons and straitjackets, and turned the asylums into genuine rehabilitative centers, where the patients were treated with kindness and understanding.

Physical degeneracy

--HOW IT WORKED: Many of Darwin’s ideas were appropriated and interpreted in odd ways by the medical community. The idea that humans evolved from apes suggested to many that humans could evolve back into apes, or other “lesser creatures.” The lower classes and most foreigners were thought to be particularly bestial, and many cases of idiocy or depravity were blamed on inherited animalistic tendencies.

--SYMPTOMS: The “science” of phrenology was practiced by many alienists, claiming to be able to determine a person’s evolution and character by the physiognomy of their head and face. A sloping brow suggested imbecility and cruelty, a rounded one intellect and kindness; blue eyes suggested a fiery spirit, brown eyes a calmer one.

--TREATMENT: Nothing could be done for the poor wretch doomed to a life of a misshapen skull or bestial parents. Phrenology was used as a diagnostic tool for degeneracy and character; employers were encouraged to inspect the heads of prospective servants for desirable character traits, and husbands the shapes of their wives’ skulls for a good domestic match.

SOME COMMON DISEASES

Hysteria

--SYMPTOMS: Paroxysms, or hysterical fits, characterized by wild screams and convulsions; fainting fits, or “the vapours”; aches and pains in the joints and spine; failing health in general; “unusual action or inaction”; abnormally large sexual appetites; lack of maternal feelings; “individualism and antisocial feelings”; “impressionability”; “tumultuous emotion at the slightest provocation” (all Donkin, 1892).

--AFFECTED PARTIES: “The persons who suffer from hysteria are commonly young women in whom the process of menstruation is disordered, and who are either naturally feeble, or have been debilitated by disease or want.” (It is to be noted that the doctors who diagnosed these unfortunate ladies were uniformly men.)

--CAUSED BY: Sexual repression or lack of sexual satisfaction (spinsterhood, “women of strong passions separated from their husbands”); abnormal sexual abstinence or excess; masturbation; lack of exercise, whether mental or physical; social restrictions and prohibitions; corsets worn too tight; normal feminine temperament.

--TREATMENT: Exercise and healthy diet; intellectual stimulation; marriage and motherhood; medical stimulation of the genitals (originally done manually by doctors in an office, later done with “special instruments” (vibrators) in a doctor’s office or at the home); confinement to the home; celibacy.

Melancholia (often known as Neuralgia or Neurasthenia)

--SYMPTOMS: “Thoughts directed towards the evils of a future life”; agitation; grief; “a morbid temperament”; “a belief of having displeased the Great Creator, and of being hopelessly shut out from mercy and from heaven”; “bodily mortifications”; “severe fasts”; nervousness; apathy; physical malaise; “increased susceptibility to fatigue on slight exertion, mental or physical.”

--AFECTED PARTIES: Some doctors believed that the a combination of the “delicate sensibilities” of the upper classes and the pressure placed upon them to excel contributed to melancholia, and that the lower classes were too coarse and brutish to be affected. Others pointed out that the lower classes were actually in more danger of the illness because of the deprivation and struggle of their everyday existence.

--CAUSED BY: Many alienists believed in the existence of a “nerve force,” or vis nervosa, variously considered to be a bodily fluid, aethereal substance, or electrical force that the body had a limited supply of. Once this vis nervosa was depleted, through overwork, stress, or mere failure to produce it, the nerves could not hold up and the body would go into a neurasthenic fit.

--TREATMENT: Tonics with ingredients like quinine, codeine, strychnine, and mercury; opiates such as morphine or laudanum; iron, and foods with iron (to revitalize the blood); bleeding and purging (often done with leeches); a change of diet; bed rest; mild exercise and relaxation in the open air; hydropathy (various types of hot and cool baths; immersion therapy).

Sources:

Embodied Selves: An Anthology of Psychological Texts 1830-1890. Ed. Taylor, Jenny Bourne and Shuttleworth, Sally. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.

Oppenheim, Janet. Shattered Nerves: Doctors, Patients, and Depression in Victorian England. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.

Chambers’s Encyclopedia of Universal Knowledge. New York: Collier, 1888.