Research Guides: HIST 350: Madness (HC): Relevant Books

Finding Scholarly Studies in Books

Use the Tripod catalog for your home institution to look for all books (print and digital) owned by your college as well as the print titles at the other two schools.

The following searches are a sampling of possibilities. To find materials on a topic, try doing a keyword search in the Tripod Catalog to find relevant materials and then use the subject headings assigned to those titles to find more books. Note that all these searches are in the Books+Media channel. In examples #1, 3 and 5 below, using keywords- that is Any Field- (rather than subjects) will pick up results from chapter titles and content summaries.

("mental illness" OR madness OR melancholy OR insanity) AND ("16th century") [Keyword search]

(asylum* AND history) AND (mental OR mentally OR insane OR insanity OR lunatic* OR madness) [All Subjects]

(demon* OR devil*) AND (possess* OR miracle* OR miraculous) [Keywords] AND (medieval OR "middle ages") [Subject]

suicide AND history [Subjects] Limited to publications 1990 to 2022

"self murder" [Any Field]

** Try opening a search above and replace one of the topics with your research interest.

Going beyond the TriCollege Collections

WorldCat
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A catalog of the holdings of books, journals, and other materials held by OCLC (Online Computer Library Center) member libraries worldwide. Also includes manuscripts, maps, films and sound recordings. Some digital titles are available open access from links in WorldCat.

WorldCat is an important place to look for many materials not owned by the Tricollege Libraries. This combined library catalog contains more than 500 million titles owned by libraries around the world. Many of these items are available to you though interlibrary loan. Use the button to place requests.

Selected Books on the History of Mental Illness

Care and Custody of the Mentally Ill, Incompetent, and Disabled in Medieval England by Wendy J. Turner
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ISBN: 9782503540399
Publication Date: 2013-12-19
This book is about the social understanding and treatment of the mentally ill, incompetent, and disabled in late medieval England. Drawing on archival, literary, medical, legal, and ecclesiastic sources and studies, the volume seeks to present a coherent picture of society's treatment, protection, abuse, care, and custody of the incapacitated.
The Invisible Plague by E. Fuller Torrey; Judy Miller
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ISBN: 0813530032
Publication Date: 2001-12-01
Torrey and Miller examine the records on insanity in England, Ireland, Canada, and the United States over a 250-year period, concluding, through both qualitative and quantitative evidence, that disorders like schizophrenia and bipolar illness are an unrecognized, modern-day plague.Torrey and Miller insist upon the biological reality of psychiatric disease and examine the reasons why its contemporary prevalence has been so profoundly misunderstood.
The Languages of Psyche by G. S. Rousseau (Editor)
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ISBN: 9780520071193
Publication Date: 1991-01-07
The Languages of Psyche traces the dualism of mind and body during the "long eighteenth century," from the Restoration in England to the aftermath of the French Revolution. See in particular this essay: "Mind and Body in the Clinic: Philippe Pinel, Alexander Crichton, Dominique Esquirol, and the Birth of Psychiatry."
Madness and Enterprise : Psychiatry, Economic Reason, and the Emergence of Pathological Value by Nima Bassiri
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ISBN: 9780226830872
Publication Date: 2024-01-19
Uncovers a powerful relationship between pathology and money: beginning in the nineteenth century, the severity of mental illness was measured against a patient's economic productivity. Through an exploration of the intertwined histories of psychiatry and economic thought, Nima Bassiri shows how this relationship transformed the very idea of value in the modern North Atlantic, as the most common forms of social valuation--moral value, medical value, and economic value--were rendered equivalent and interchangeable.
Madness in Civilization by Andrew Scull
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ISBN: 0691166153
Publication Date: 2015-04-06
Today, mental disturbance is most commonly viewed through a medical lens, but societies have also sought to make sense of it through religion or the supernatural, or by constructing psychological or social explanations in an effort to tame the demons of unreason. Madness in Civilization traces the long and complex history of this affliction and our attempts to treat it.
Print copies are also listed in the Tripod catalog.
Medieval Communities and the Mad: Narratives of Crime and Mental Illness in Late Medieval France by Aleksandra Nicole Pfau
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ISBN: 9048533325
Publication Date: 2020-12-01
The madness of individuals played a role in engaging communities with legal mechanisms and proto-national identity constructs, as petitioners sought the king's mercy as an alternative to local justice. The resulting narratives about the mentally ill in late medieval France constructed madness as an inability to live according to communal rules.
Mental (Dis)Order in Later Medieval Europe by Sari Katajala-Peltomaa (Volume Editor)
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ISBN: 9004269746
Publication Date: 2014-03-13
The boundaries between mental, social and physical order and various states of disorder - unexpected mood swings, fury, melancholy, stress, insomnia, and demonic influence - form the core of this compilation. For medieval men and women, religious rituals, magic, herbs, dietary requirements as well as scholastic medicine were a way to cope.
The Routledge History of Madness and Mental Health by Greg Eghigian (Editor)
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ISBN: 9781138781603
Publication Date: 2017-01-22
This book explores the history and historiography of madness from the ancient and medieval worlds to the present day. It is thematically organised and written by leading academics. The volume also examines the challenges involved in analysing primary sources in this area..
Sources in the History of Psychiatry from 1800 to the Present by Chris Millard (Editor)
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ISBN: 9780367541217
Publication Date: 2022-03-29
Looks at a range of different historical sources, both institutional and private, so that the reader can get a sense of the range and utility of casebooks, artwork, medical journals and more.
Theaters of Madness by Benjamin Reiss
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ISBN: 9780226709635
Publication Date: 2008-08-30
In the mid-1800s, a utopian movement to rehabilitate the insane resulted in a wave of publicly funded asylums many of which became unexpected centers of cultural activity. This book explores both the cultural history and the asylum's place in the fabric of nineteenth-century life, reanimating a time when the treatment of the insane was a central topic in debates over democracy, freedom, and modernity.
This Way Madness Lies by Mike Jay
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ISBN: 9780500518977
Publication Date: 2016-10-25
This Way Madness Lies is a thought-provoking exploration of the history of madness and its treatment as seen through the lens of its proverbial home: Bethlem Royal Hospital, London, popularly known as Bedlam. The book charts the evolution of the asylum through four incarnations: the eighteenth-century madhouse, the nineteenth century asylum, the twentieth-century mental hospital, and the post-asylum modern day, when mental health has become the concern of the wider community.