James Frame's The Philisophy of Insanity (1860)

Our aim in presenting this Classic Text is to foster wider analytical attention to a fascinating commentary on insanity by a former inmate of Glasgow Royal Asylum, Gartnavel, James Frame. Despite limited coverage in existing literature, his text (and other writings) have been surprisingly neglected in modern scholarship. Frame’s Philosophy presents a vivid, affecting, often destigmatising account of the insane and their institutional provision in Scotland. Derived from extensive first-hand experience, Frame’s chronicle eloquently and graphically delineates his own illness and the roles and perspectives of many other actors, from clinicians and managers to patients and relations. It is also valuable as a subjective, but heavily mediated, kaleidoscopic view of old and new theories concerning mental afflictions, offering many insights about the medico-moral ethos and milieu of the mid-Victorian Scottish asylum. Alternating as consolatory and admonitory illness biography, insanity treatise, mental health self-help guide, and asylum reform and promotion manual, it demands scrutiny for both its more progressive views and its more compromised and prejudicial attitudes

Introduction: histories of asylums, insanity and psychiatry in Scotland

This paper introduces a special issue on ‘Histories of madness, asylums and psychiatry in Scotland’, situating the papers that follow in an outline historiography of work in this field. Using Allan Beveridge’s claims in 1993 about the relative lack of research on the history of psychiatry in Scotland, the paper reviews a range of contributions that have emerged since then, loosely distinguishing between ‘overviews’ – work addressing longer-term trends and broader periods and systems – and inquiries that get in deep with particular ‘individuals and institutions’. There remains much still to do, but the present special issue signals what is currently being achieved, not least by a new generation of scholars in and on Scotland

Bedlam revisited: A history of Bethlem hospital 1634-1770.

PhDThis thesis takes issue with a polemical historiography of Bethlem which has tended to 'view the hospital as a nadir in the history of psychiatry, and to accept, too uncritically, the distorted metaphor of 'Bedlam' for the reality. It argues that there was not the radical equivalency that some historians have posited between animalistic conceptions of the insane and the actual practices and policies pursued at early modern Bethiem. Nor was this paradigm of madness the only oae prevailing in the classical period, Bethlem patients also being regarded (e.g.) as 'objects of charity', requiring both mental and bodily relief. Rather than 'brutalized', it is sustained, the inmates of Bethiem were being managed and maintained, although inadequately and inefficiently. What modern commentators have disparaged as maltreatment and squalor at Bethlem, was not merely the result of an attitude to the mad as brutes, but was also the result of a lack of resources and a failure to measure up to the ideals of provision. Furthermore, it is demonstrated that the squalor and brutality of Bethiem was neither as extreme, nor as undifferentiated, as has been alleged. The hospital is located comprehensively within the context of contemporary provision for the sick and insane poor, Bethiem having too often been portrayed as if a separate island of sequestered madness. Rather than describing an immutable monolith of tradition and apathy, significant areas of evolution and innovation in the care and treatment of the insane at the hospital are delineated. Uniquely exposed to public scrutiny, the environment of Bethiem was subject, more than that of any other contemporary hospital, to powerful external forces of arbitratioia. A particular focus of the analysis entails the complex interactions between the hospital's administrators and inhabitants, and the public at large. Inter-relations between Bethlem's visitors, staff and patients, and between the insane and those who supported and committed them, have especially suffered from simplistic interpretations, and from a general ignorance with the hospital's own records and with the records of other administrative and juridical bodies dealing with the poor insane. A major preoccupation of this survey has been to contribute greater nuance and balance to standard readings of responses to the insane, both within and without the hospital

Use of carbon isotope and C/N geochemistry in reconstructing vegetation communities: a mid- to late- Holocene palaeoenvironmental investigation from Romney Marsh, Kent, UK

The use of stable carbon isotope geochemistry and C/N ratios for coastal palaeoenvironmental reconstructions is a relatively new and under-researched field. This research seeks to understand the processes which govern the carbon isotope and C/N ratios of past and present vegetation communities, particularly alder carr and saltmarsh. Romney Marsh is a large, extensively studied reclaimed coastal wetland in south east England containing a 2-metre thick peat layer that formed between c. 5500-1500 cal. yrs. BP. The palynological data from two mid- to late- Holocene cores, Hope Farm and Little Cheyne Court allows comparison to the ς¹³C and C/N data collected in this study. Ninety three contemporary plant samples, 25 contemporary soil samples and 234 fossil peat samples were collected and analysed for their carbon isotope and C/N ratios. The results show that contemporary alder carr woodland plant material have more negative ς¹³C (-26%₀ to -32%₀) than saltmarsh plant material (-22.5%₀ to -26%₀). The C/N of the plant material from the sampled vegetation communities varied dependent on the type material collected. In general leaf material has lower C/N (around 20) than non leaf material (btween 15 and 80). In the fossil core, former raised bog, sedge fen, alder carr and saltmarsh communities, identified by pollen and microfossil remains, have been tested for ς¹³C and C/N. There is eveidence for post-depositional changes in the alder carr communities, with a negative shift of between 0.7%₀ and 2%₀ from the contemporary soil to fossil peat. Three periods of increased higher water availability have been identified within the Little Cheyne Court core, using ς¹³C, at 4600 - 4000; 3200 to 2700,; to 2200 to 1500 cal. yrs. BP. Spectral analysis has found evidence for cycles, with periodicities of 1005 and 1675 years. The research has also provided evidence for past environmental stress on the vegetation communities , including changes in precipitation and changes in local coastal conditions, principally relative sea level

MODULATING MALE AGGRESSION AND COURTSHIP: DETECTING EXTERNAL PHEROMONAL AND NUTRITIONAL INFORMATION

Survival and reproduction in the natural world requires an organism to identify and react to the presence of environmental stimuli in a time and cue dependent manner. Such temporal specificity requires the development and use of specialized sensory organs that receive this external sensory information. Neurons within the specialized sensory organs respond to touch, taste, pheromones, chemicals, and light, and transduce this information to the central brain. In many systems, gustatory and olfactory chemosensation in particular, provides critical information regarding sex and species identification as well as the status of food resources. The output of neurons which receive chemical information is regulated by the action of biogenic amines, including serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine. In this dissertation I examined the role of octopamine (the invertebrate structural homologue of norepinephrine) signaling in the regulation of two behaviors required for survival and reproduction; aggression and courtship. In chapter II, I, along with my colleagues, demonstrate that neurons bearing the taste receptor Gr32a form putative synapses with octopamine neurons within the subesophageal zone, and that octopamine neurons promote male aggression and courtship behavior. These findings help to explain how an organism selects appropriate behavioral responses when confronted with the pheromonal signals of a rival male. In chapter III, I examined the effects of octopamine signaling on taste sensitization. In this section, I examined the distribution and function of neurons that express the Oaβ1R receptor, and found that these neurons are sugar sensitive. As the presence of a food source is known to be a major contributor to the generation of aggressive and courtship behavior, these findings imply a mechanism by which exposure to an environmental stimulus or changes in internal octopamine signaling may sensitize a particular form of sensory input

The Grand Organ of Sympathy:Fashionable Stomach Complaints and the Mind in Britain, 1700-1850

Although the nerves have often been at the centre of the historiographical discussion of the so-called fashionable diseases of Georgian Britain, the stomach and digestion have at least as much claim for consideration. Associations between excessive consumption and elite status lent a touch of glamour to digestive problems, while creating the basis for a critique that depicted stomach maladies as the result of excess, greed and immorality. The first section of this paper explores how the patient experience of these disorders related to their glamorous connotations. The second part then considers changing views of the relationship between the digestion and the mind, arguing that the stomach was very much at the heart of ideas of selfhood until the nineteenth century. The third section examines the reasons for the apparent decline of modish stomach complaints at the end of the Georgian era in terms of changing medical thinking and socio-cultural context

The Masses of Transition Circumstellar Disks: Observational Support for Photoevaporation Models

We report deep Sub-Millimeter Array observations of 26 pre-main-sequence (PMS) stars with evolved inner disks. These observations measure the mass of the outer disk (r ~20-100 AU) across every stage of the dissipation of the inner disk (r < 10 AU) as determined by the IR spectral energy distributions (SEDs). We find that only targets with high mid-IR excesses are detected and have disk masses in the 1-5 M_Jup range, while most of our objects remain undetected to sensitivity levels of M_DISK ~0.2-1.5 M_Jup. To put these results in a more general context, we collected publicly available data to construct the optical to millimeter wavelength SEDs of over 120 additional PMS stars. We find that the near-IR and mid-IR emission remain optically thick in objects whose disk masses span 2 orders of magnitude (~0.5-50 M_Jup). Taken together, these results imply that, in general, inner disks start to dissipate only after the outer disk has been significantly depleted of mass. This provides strong support for photoevaporation being one of the dominant processes driving disk evolution.Comment: Accepted for publication by ApJL, 4 pages and 3 figure

The Dust Properties of Eight Debris Disk Candidates as Determined by Submillimeter Photometry

The nature of far-infrared dust emission toward main sequence stars, whether interstellar or circumstellar, can be deduced from submillimeter photometry. We present JCMT/SCUBA flux measurements at 850 microns toward 8 stars with large photospheric excesses at 60-100 microns. 5 sources were detected at 3-sigma or greater significance and one was marginally detected at 2.5-sigma. The inferred dust masses and temperatures range from 0.033 to 0.24 Earth masses and 43-65 K respectively. The frequency behavior of the opacity, tau_nu ~ nu^beta, is relatively shallow, beta < 1. These dust properties are characteristic of circumstellar material, most likely the debris from planetesimal collisions. The 2 non-detections have lower temperatures, 35-38 K and steeper opacity indices, beta > 1.5, that are more typical of interstellar cirrus. The confirmed disks all have inferred diameters > 2'', most lie near the upper envelope of the debris disk mass distribution, and 4 are bright enough to be feasible for high resolution imaging.Comment: accepted by Ap