Introduction
As science became increasingly specialised, with the emergence of sciences such as psychiatry within this period, the historian might expect ‘genius’, as a mental phenomenon, to be brought more fully under the remit of the psychiatric profession. There has been a considerable amount of scholarly work concerning the emergence and consolidation of British psychiatry as a newly self-conscious group during this period,^ particularly with reference to the reliance on the asylum as the location for treating and housing the mentally ill. The increasing corporate identity of the psychiatrists encouraged them to assert their monopoly over the diagnosis and treatment of mental problems.^ This chapter therefore investigates discussions of ‘genius’ from the perspective of late-nineteenth-century British psychiatry.
In doing so, this chapter assesses the precise nature of the British psychiatric reaction to continental research, developed most notably by the Italian criminal anthropologist Cesare Lombroso, that proposed a link between genius and pathology, particularly insanity. Only two British authors saw fit to publish works dedicated to the issue of the insanity of genius as it emerged in the late nineteenth century. Under scrutiny therefore are the works of an English scientific populariser, Henry Havelock Ellis (1859-1939), and a Scottish journalist, John Ferguson Nisbet (1851-1899). Analysis
* See for instance, Teizo Ogawa (ed.), History o f Psychiatry - Mental Illness and Its Treatments - Proceedings o f the 4'* International Symposium on the Comparative History o f Medicine—East and West
(Tokyo, 1982); W.F. Bynum, Roy Porter, and Michael Shepherd (eds). The Anatomy o f Madness: Essays in the History o f Psychiatry (London, 1985-1988), 3 vols.; Andrew Scull, The M ost Solitary o f
Afflictions: Madness and Society in Britain I700-I900 (New Haven, 1987); German E. Berrios and Hugh Freeman (eds), 150 Years o f British Psychiatry, I8 4 I-I9 9 I (London, 1991); and Andrew Scull, Charlotte MacKenzie, and Nicholas Hervey, Masters o f Bedlam: The Transformation o f the Mad-Doctoring Trade
(Princeton, New Jersey, 1996).
^ Scull, MacKenzie, and Hervey, Masters o f Bedlam, p. 3; and see Joseph Melling, ‘Accommodating madness: new research in the social history o f insanity and institutions’, in Joseph Melling and Bill Forsythe (eds). Insanity, Institutions and Society, I800-I9I4: A Social History o f Madness in Comparative Perspective (New York and London, 1999), pp. 1-30; Leonard D. Smith, ‘The county asylum in the mixed economy of care, 1808-1845’, in Melling and Forsythe (eds). Insanity, Institutions and Society, pp. 33-47; and Andrew Scull, ‘Rethinking the history of asylumdom’, in Melling and Forsythe (eds). Insanity, Institutions and Society, pp. 295-315; on professionalisation in general, see Harold Perkin, The Rise o f Professional Society England since 1880 (London, 1989), and Penelope J. Corfield, Power and the Professions in Britain 1700-1850 (London, 1995).
then shifts to dissect the reactions of the British psychiatric élite to these ideas, as seen in their articles and books. The names that dominated the psychiatric profession in the mid- to late-nineteenth century all contributed in some form to the psychiatric discussion concerning the nature of genius. Heading this late nineteenth-century psychiatric élite were alienists such as John Charles Bucknill (1817-1897) and Henry Maudsley (1835-1918),^ along with Daniel Hack Tuke (1827-1895), William Wotherspoon Ireland (1832-1909), and James Crichton-Browne (1840-1938).
The majority of relevant articles discussed below appeared in one of the two specialist psychiatric journals that appeared from the late 1840s and early 1850s, the principal organs of the emerging specialism. The emergence of these periodicals was part of the continuing proliferation of journals being used as tools to advance professional interests, a trend which had peaked during the first half of the nineteenth century.'^ The Asylum Journal, later the Journal o f Mental Science (JMS), was founded in 1853 by the Medico-Psychological Association, British psychiatry’s principal corporate body.^ Rooted in psychiatry’s research base of the new county asylums that were built under the 1845 Lunacy Act, this periodical provided aspiring asylum doctors with a forum in which they could develop ideas, publish research papers, and build up careers. As such the JM S helped to launch psychiatry as a reliable part of medical science.^ However, with the editorship and production of the JMS falling into the hands of the élite of the psychiatric profession within the first ten years of its existence, it ceased to serve a common purpose. Instead, it became the mouthpiece for the individual editors in charge of it at any one time.^ For the purposes of the present research, all volumes from its inception in 1853 up to 1914 have been studied, providing important commentary on developments within élite psychiatric thought as it occurred under the editorship of a number of key figures within the psychiatric community, including Bucknill, Maudsley,
^ As members of an élite, see Trevor Turner, ‘“Not worth powder and shot”: the public profile o f the Medico-Psychological Association, c. 1851-1914’, in Berrios and Freeman, 150 Years, pp. 3-16: p. 13.
* Scull, MacKenzie, and Hervey, Masters o f Bedlam, p. 196; see also W.R. Lefanu, British Periodicals o f Medicine, 1640-1899 (Oxford, 1984); P.W.J. Bartrip, Mirror o f Medicine: A History o f the British Medical Journal (Oxford, 1990); W.F. Bynum, Stephen Lock and Roy Porter (eds). Medical Journals and M edical Knowledge: Historical Essays (London, 1992).
^ Turner, ‘“Not worth powder and shot’” , pp. 3-16; W.F. Bynum, Roy Porter and Michael Shepherd, ‘Introduction’, in Bynum, Porter and Shepherd (eds). Anatomy o f Madness, 111, pp. 1-12: p. 8.
^ Richard Russell, ‘The lunacy profession and its staff in the second half o f the nineteenth century, with special reference to the West Riding Lunatic Asylum’, in Bynum, Porter and Shepherd (eds). Anatomy o f Madness, III, pp. 297-315: p. 299.
and Hack Tuke. It becomes evident from the JMS that the question of the existence of such a figure as the mad genius attracted very little public attention even among Lombroso’s psychiatric counterparts in Britain. Further, a survey of English journals as given in the entire Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals,^ reveals that the notion of genius as a pathological entity was not taken up in the British highbrow periodical press.
The systematic sifting of the contents of the JM S has been supplemented by a comprehensive biographical analysis of the key individuals in Britain who published any material, opinions or results of investigations, about the pathological nature, or otherwise, of genius. Such a record highlights the interrelationships between different individuals involved in the issue, as well as providing a wider context for determining how much translation of ideas and books took place over international boundaries. In analysing the backgrounds and interests of the individuals concerned, providing their intellectual and professional contexts, it becomes possible to judge how pervasive the idea of the pathology of genius was in the late nineteenth century. Approaching this material from an historical viewpoint reveals the extent to which Becker’s sociological analysis skews the understanding of the issue in the British context. The evidence that emerges reveals some important points about attitudes within British psychiatry in the twilight of the Victorian era.