Inquiry Errors Relative Insanity Consequences by Burrows, First Edition (2 results)

Hardcover. Condition: Good. 1st Edition. Contemporary half calf, marbled boards, dark purple lettering-label. Spine a little worn, lacking top 25mm. of backstrip, covers and corners rubbed, upper joint tender, some foxing. Elegant illegible 19th-century monogram bookplate, old marginal pencillings on first, fold-out table ("A Comparative View of the Cures of Cases of Insanity in Different Institutions for Lunatics"); later bookplate of John Clay. "Is insanity curable - and in what proportion?" In his opening chapter George Man Burrows (1771-1846), for the first half of his career a conventional general practitioner based in Bloomsbury (as first chairman of the Association of Apothecaries and Surgeon-Apothecaries much embroiled in medical politics), from 1816 moved into alienism. From the case histories he here carefully offers, he seems to have been a humane and thoughtful psychiatrist, sympathetic to his patients and keen to regulate the conduct of asylums; his own in Chelsea, however, got him into trouble in 1829, when he struggled to contest two cases of wrongful confinement. This ruined him.

First edition, 8vo (220 x 130 mm), ix, [1], 320pp., some intermittent light foxing, 1 folding table, fait stamp to title page, later maroon cloth, rubbed, spine lettered in gilt. An investigation of the curability of insanity based on the statistics of a countrywide survey of mental institutions. "Burrows claimed to have cured eighty-one percent of all the mental patients in his private asylum, with the rate rising to ninety-one percent for cases of less than a year's durationquestionable figures that were nevertheless accepted uncritically by his book's many readers. The cult of curability was an extreme reaction to the earlier belief that insanity was beyond help; during the period of its greatest influence, it inspired a marked increase in the construction of state mental hospitals."Hook & Norman. Provenance: Formerly in the library of the Birmingham Medical Institute. Hook & Norman, Haskell F. Norman Library I, 379; Hunter & Macalpine, p. 778; Wellcome II, p. 277.