A valuable guide to current work in the social and cultural history of insanity, this book provides a comprehensive summary of the debates on the growth of institutional care during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Using the English model to investigate the significance of ethnicity, race and gender, as well as political and cultural factors, the book also features studies in Wales, Scotland, Ireland, India and South Africa, and analyzes the history of colonial medicine more generally.

Tags: insanity institutions and society 1800 1914