Mind-Forg’d Manacles
How the English understood, treated and confined the mad between the Restoration and the Regency.
Roy Porter’s history of madness in England from the Restoration to the Regency, roughly 1660 to 1820. He looks at how insanity was understood and treated in that period, from religious and moral explanations to the spread of private madhouses and early psychiatric medicine, and at how the mad themselves experienced it. The title comes from a line by William Blake.
Recommended by 1 Person
Louise Foxcroft
I could have chosen any book by Porter, but this one is my favourite. Roy Porter died far too young. He was the most exuberant man, and the generosity and excitement that he had in everyday life enthused all his books. He was meticulous in his research, and he wrote the most fantastically lucid prose.
Interview · May 2012
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