Medical History of British India

I’d like to say thanks to the many people who turned out to hear me talk about the Lunatic Asylums of British India on 10th October. The National Library of Scotland will be making the audio recording available soon on its website so please keep an eye out.

There were some interesting questions raised at the end and I’ve had time to do a bit of investigating to give fuller answers:

1. What is cardiazol? Cardiazol convulsion therapy was used in some Indian asylums in the 1930s particularly Ranchi Indian hospital in Bihar. Cardiazol was injected into a patient which induced a convulsion. This was painful, but the colonial doctors deemed that it was successful in treating those with schizophrenia.
Cardiazol itself is also known as pentylenetetrazol (INN), as metrazol, pentetrazol, pentamethylenetetrazol, or PTZ, and is a drug used as a circulatory and respiratory stimulant. High doses lead to convulsions.
This webpage about the history of shock therapy gives more information and puts the treatment into context.

2. Were there any blind, deaf and mute patients in the asylums? Yes, there were. A quick ’search book content’ search on the Medical History of British India website reveals that ‘amentia deaf mute’ was recorded in Tezpur 1877 (’amentia’ meaning ‘dementia’ or ‘mental deficiency’), blind patients were admitted into institutions in Bombay (1897) and Bengal (1880). In Patna (1912-14) it is reported that village simpletons and the deaf and dumb were accused of trivial offences and sent as inasane to the local asylum.

There were also questions about how the asylums were funded and where the staff came from. I’ll be looking into these this week and will post about these issues next week.

Another Wellcome Trust funded project, access to the historic archives of Broadmoor Hospital in Berkshire, England, reveals life in a 19th century British Lunatic Asylum.

Broadmoor opened in 1863 and was built specifically to provide refuge for criminally insane ‘lunatics’ of both sexes and of a range of ages.

While most of the Victorian asylums were closed down at the end of the 20th century, Broadmoor still retains its imposing red-brick Victorian edifice and has housed some of Britain’s most notorious murderers. These aspects have lent it a macabre reputation particularly in the tabloid press.

However, the Berkshire Record Office website reveals what life was like in Victorian Broadmoor, showing that as in the Indian asylums, a regime of diet and occupation was the main treatment available to patients.

The site also links to a free eBook, Broadmoor Revealed, and an excellent podcast by the book’s author and archivist Mark Stevens.

If you are like me and curious to know what life is like in Broadmoor today, then this NHS film promotes a wider understanding of its work.

The Hospital has its 150th anniversary next year and is still working to dispel the myths and show that it is an institution whose work is about healthcare, not punishment.

After enjoying my time and giving my paper at the Interdisciplinary 4th Global Conference on Madness and starting promotion for the Mental Health collection I have been in touch with a helpful researcher who presented a paper at the 2009 Madness conference.

Shilpi Rajpal presented on Life inside the Delhi Lunatic Asylum 1870-1900 and also has published an article in Economic and Political Weekly, April 21 2012 about the poor state of archives in India, appealing to the larger public and the academic community to come together and save the documental legacy of India.

The Delhi Asylum reports 1868-1910 are now available on the Medical History of British India website and are free to access.

I am delighted to receive positive feedback from someone who values the preservation and access work that we are doing on the Medical History of British India Project.

I’d love to hear from more researchers, so please either comment on this blog or email me at f.millard@nls.uk

You may be aware that the ‘Medicine – Mental health’ collection is now freely available online which is incredibly exciting.

(hand-coloured print of the Calcutta Asylum 1851 is from www.europeana.eu)

The 20,000 pages (46 volumes) cover the period of 1867 – 1948 and describe the patients, staff and conditions of asylums throughout colonial India. This free to access material provides extensive research on responses to mental illness when the asylum’s role was changing. The reports particularly show how ‘moral management’ was used by British colonists to treat native and European patients. This material will be particularly valuable to genealogists and those interested in the history of psychiatry, Indian and colonial history.

Keep an eye on the National Library of Scotland’s Events page for details of a talk I will be giving to introduce this amazing collection in October.

I am giving a paper on the ‘Medicine – Mental health collection’ (otherwise known as the lunatic asylum reports) at the MAD5 conference in Oxford at the end of this month.

The aim is to advertise how fascinating and useful the reports are. Currently myself and library digital staff are testing out the website ready for 20,00 pages to go live in September.

Exciting!

My draft paper is available online.

My paper presentation will explore the humane treatment in the asylums and the colonial motivations were for providing such treatment. In the 1970s and 1980s some historians argued that asylums all over the world were instruments of ’social control’ and colonial historians have written that western medicine in India was a ‘colonial tool’ used to maintain power over their subjects.

The latest collection to be added to the Medical History of British India website offers the opportunity to explore the extent to which the asylums served as a colonial tool to coerce and confine the native population and how they dealt with their own mentally ill. My talk explores the extent and effect of the therapeutic ‘moral management’ of patients which was also practised in other countries.

In the news today – Glenside Hospital in Bristol, an asylum which opened in the mid-nineteenth century, has been awarded £30,000 to enhance its museum facilities:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-16813712

The Museum of the Mind was opened in 2010 and saw over 1,500 visitors in its first year.

With displays showing old medications and remedies, a padded cell, inmate drawings and mortuary equipment, this looks like an exciting way to learn more about how mental illness was treated in the past and how the treatments changed.