Masters of Bedlam : The Transformation of the Mad-doctoring Trade

Through an examination of the lives and careers of a series of 19th-century "mad-doctors", this book provides a perspective on the creation of the modern profession of psychiatry, taking readers from the secret and shady practice of the trade in lunacy, through the utopian expectations that were aroused by the lunacy reform movement, to the dismal realities of the barracks-asylums, those Victorian museums of madness within which most 19th-century alienists found themselves compelled to practice.

Across a century that spans the period from an unreformed Bedlam to the construction of a post-Darwinian bio-psychiatry centered on the new Maudsley Hospital, from a therapeutics of bleeding, purging and close confinement, through the era of moral treatment and nonrestraint, to a fin-de-siecle degenerationism and despair, men claiming expertise in the treatment of mental disorder sought to construct a collective identity as trustworthy and scientifically-qualified professionals.

This series of biographies aims to answer the question "How successful were they in creating such a new identity?"