Organ Extracts and the Development of Psychiatry: Hormonal Treatments at the Maudsley Hospital 1923–1938

Evans, Bonnie; Jones, Edgar

doi:10.1002/jhbs.21548

Cited by 15 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 59 publications

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“…Although this trend in mental science discourse could be viewed as evidence of a physiological correlation in line with developing psychiatry's increased focus on body-mind connections, notions of hormonal imbalance did not yet exist, with the word "hormone" itself only coined in 1905 (Tata 2005). Endocrine-related theories of mental disease similarly did not emerge until the early 20th century: a relevant example in this context is William Siegfried Dawson's 1924 claim that impaired ovarian functioning resulted in psychological instability or disorder (Evans and Jones 2012), although Henry Maudsley made a similar claim for female hysterical insanity in the late 19th century (Porter 1993). Nonetheless, during most of the Victorian era the attention alienists paid to patients' menses seems to reflect contemporary medico-cultural concerns as much as anticipate later developments in psychopathology.…”

Section: Bucknill and Tuke's Medical Case Historiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spectral Sterility in Bucknill and Tuke’s A Manual of Psychological Medicine and Bulwer Lytton’s A Strange Story

Ford

2019

Humanities

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This essay identifies and examines a narrative structure—here called the sterility plot—that is shown to recur in British mid-19th century psychiatric texts and imaginative literature engaging mental science. Treating physicians Bucknill and Tuke’s A Manual of Psychological Medicine and novelist Bulwer Lytton’s A Strange Story as influential case studies, it explores in particular the Gothic-styled spectralisation used by both Victorian medical and literary authors to characterize females whose mental disorders are depicted as bound with a short- or long-term inability to reproduce. The narratives thereby gender, pathologize, and suspensefully dramatize the plot trajectory of mentally ill patients’ clinical and fictional case histories, which, taken together, is argued to reveal mid-century medico-cultural anxieties about the health of Britain’s imperial future being threatened by potentially sterile Englishwomen.

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Section: Bucknill and Tuke's Medical Case Historiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spectral Sterility in Bucknill and Tuke’s A Manual of Psychological Medicine and Bulwer Lytton’s A Strange Story

Ford

2019

Humanities

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“…Breakdown during adolescence or around the time of pregnancy, he believed, was ‘due to the failure of the vital impulse ( élan vital ) … an inborn character, like longevity and durability … due to bodily conditions’ (Mott, 1922: 465). As a result, Mott’s laboratory research into the pathology of severe mental illness became increasingly directed towards the reproductive and endocrine systems (Evans and Jones, 2012).…”

Section: Post-war Theoriesmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘An atmosphere of cure’: Frederick Mott, shell shock and the Maudsley

Jones

2014

Hist Psychiatry

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Although recognized as a medical scientist, the work of Frederick Mott as a physician, educator and clinical policymaker has been overshadowed. As a late entrant to the asylum system, Mott questioned established practices of treating mentally-ill patients and campaigned for reform. During World War I, entrusted with the management of the Maudsley neurological section, he sought to raise clinical standards and experimented with a range of therapies designed to treat the most severe or intractable forms of shell shock. While Mott believed that psychiatric disorder was underwritten by inherited characteristics, he did not dismiss the impact of the environment. The diversity of his interests has led to an understatement of his contribution as a physician, not only to the design and founding of the Maudsley Hospital but also to the therapeutic regime practised there during the interwar period.

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“… 15 It may be worth noting that in 2012, Bonnie Evans and Edgar Jones published an interesting article on endocrinological interventions to treat mental disorders, particularly organ extracts and hormonal treatment, at the Maudsley Hospital in London, between 1923 and 1938. Even if they do not refer to Steinach or Lipschütz, their article shows that endocrinology had an intimate relationship with psychiatry and psychoanalysis. …”

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confidence: 99%

Sigmund Freud and Alejandro Lipschütz

Vetö¹,

Sánchez

2017

History of the Human Sciences

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This article deals with the relationship between the creator of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, and the Latvian-born Chilean professor of physiology-and endocrinologist and anthropologist-Alejandro (or Alexander) Lipschütz. Up till now, the historiography of psychoanalysis in Chile has ignored the existence of this relationship, that is to say, the fact that there exists an interesting exchange of correspondence as well as references to Lipschütz in some important works published by Freud and in Freud's correspondence with the Hungarian psychoanalyst Sándor Ferenczi. There are also references to works on psychoanalysis carried out by Lipschütz in Chile. The Freud-Lipschütz relationship allows us to examine two interesting topics in contemporary historiographical approaches to psychoanalysis. First, it permits us to reflect on the connections that Freud and Ferenczi sought to establish between psychoanalysis and biology (endocrinology in particular) as a strategy to address criticism of the scientific foundations of psychoanalysis and, therefore, to help legitimize psychoanalysis in the field of science. Second, the relationship between Freud, working in a culturally influential city such as Vienna, and Lipschütz, working in a 'peripheral' country such as Chile, paves the way to reflect on the consequences of a history of psychoanalysis written from the perspective of the 'margins'. This is a history that focuses not on regions where early industrialization and modernization processes, along with an important academic and scientific tradition, help explain the interest in and

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Organ Extracts and the Development of Psychiatry: Hormonal Treatments at the Maudsley Hospital 1923–1938

Cited by 15 publications

References 59 publications

Spectral Sterility in Bucknill and Tuke’s A Manual of Psychological Medicine and Bulwer Lytton’s A Strange Story

Spectral Sterility in Bucknill and Tuke’s A Manual of Psychological Medicine and Bulwer Lytton’s A Strange Story

‘An atmosphere of cure’: Frederick Mott, shell shock and the Maudsley

Sigmund Freud and Alejandro Lipschütz

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