Madness and reason

‘Those, that die by reason of their madness’: dying insane in London, 1629–1830

Dying insane provoked 'great fear, and apprehension' in the minds of men and women. Death as a lunatic disrupted deathbed performance and rendered the victim incapable at law. This article examines lunacy as a cause of death in the metropolis between 1629 and 1830. It draws on new material from the admission registers of St Luke's Hospital, existing data from Bethlem and the London Bills of Mor...

Madness

here are clouds in the painting, of course. Almost any one of us would have included those clouds, thick with electricity and rainwater. And there is the wheat field, smudged out like an empty palm, orange beneath the storm-stricken sun. Surely, many of us would have insisted on the wheat as well. Through the middle of the wheat, a rutted road slices to the horizon and disappears beneath the cl...

Wisdom, Madness and Folly

Madness and Civilisation

main theme a fascinating topic. In Renaissance Europe the insane were frequently at large. The Age of Enlightenment, coinciding with the increased growth of cities, seems to have led to their confinement?and to intensified ill-treatment. The account of these developments enables Dr. Foucault to imply that the role of the doctor as a magician and as the protagonist of society's attitudes to the ...

Madness, Disorder, and Society

Listening to Unreason: Foucault and Wittgenstein on Reason and the Unreasonable Man