An Inquiry into Certain Errors relative to Insanity; and their consequences; physical, moral, and civil

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.…