Research Guides: HIST 350: Madness (HC): Primary Sources

Writings by The Mentally Ill

The Meteor
The Meteor was written, printed, and published by the patients of Bryce Hospital 1872-1881. Copies of available issues have been digitized by the Alabama State Archives.
The Opal
Patients at the State Lunatic Asylum in Utica, NY wrote, edited and published this magazine from 1851-1860. Volumes 2-5 and 8 are available on HathiTrust. Log in as students at Haverford or Bryn Mawr in order to download material.

Order and Disorder in Treatment

Thomas Bowles after John Maurer, The Hospital of Bethlem [Bedlam] at Moorfields, London: seen from the north, with lunatics capering in the foreground, 1750 (?), London, Wellcome Collection (Source: Wellcome Institute, Public domain)

Source Anthologies

Collections of primary texts in anthologies can be good for browsing. They touch on many different issues, often excerpting brief passages from full works that you can find in the tricolleges or through interlibrary loan.

The Ethics of Suicide by Margaret Pabst Battin (Editor)
- This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
ISBN: 9780199385805
Publication Date: 2015-10-09
This collection of primary sources - the principal texts of ethical interest from major writers in western and nonwestern cultures-facilitates exploration of many issues from a variety of viewpoints.
Medieval Disability Sourcebook: Western Europe by Cameron Hunt McNabb (Editor)
- This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
ISBN: 1950192741
Publication Date: 2020-03-24
Features translations and commentaries on medieval documents and texts. See the thematic index for 27 documents and texts dealing with mental illness and mental competency.
Medieval Medicine by Faith Wallis; Paul Edward Dutton
- This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
ISBN: 9781442601697
Publication Date: 2010-05-12
In this collection of over 100 primary sources, there are four texts concerning mental illness (nos. 1, 49, 72, and 73).
Patterns of Madness in the Eighteenth Century
- This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
ISBN: 0853239924
Publication Date: 1998-01-06
Presents 45 extracts from primary sources written between 1667 and 1818. Pieces include medical texts, literary works, and memoirs.
Voices of Madness, 1683-1796 by Allan Ingram
- This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
ISBN: 0750912103
Publication Date: 1997-04-01
Four mad individuals, or four people who were regarded as mad at least once in their lives, speak of their experience, of their treatment by others, and of their understanding of what has happened to them.

Edited Primary Sources

Still other sources are available in modern printed editions or digital copies of original titles. See examples of books in the box below.

To find more primary sources, search in Tripod or WorldCat for these subject headings (sources OR "early works") combined with topical words:

Example: (sources OR "early works") [Subjects] AND "mental illness" AND history [Any Field or Keyword]

Customers and Patrons of the Mad-Trade: The Management of Lunacy in Eighteenth-Century London with the Complete Text of John Monro's 1766 Case Book. by Jonathan Andrews; Andrew T. Scull
- This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
ISBN: 0520226607
Publication Date: 2003-01-16
This book is a lively commentary on the eighteenth-century mad-business, its practitioners, its patients, and its patrons, viewed through the unique lens of the private case book kept by the most famous mad-doctor in Augustan England, Dr. John Monro (1715-1791). The volume concludes with a complete edition of the case book itself, transcribed in full with editorial annotations by the authors.
Observations on insanity With practical remarks on the disease, and an account of the morbid appearances on dissection. by John Haslam
- This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
Publication Date: 1798
John Haslam, apothecary to London's Bethlem Hospital, and a leading psychiatrist of the early-nineteenth century, draws on his experiences including 29 patient cases. See also Illustrations of Madness written by Haslam in 1812 with commentary from historian Roy Porter (Request on EZ Borrow). It was the first book-length account of one single psychiatric case.
Schizophrenia 1677: A Psychiatric Study of an Illustrated Autobiographical Record of Demoniacal Possession by Ida Macalpine
Publication Date: 1956
This account was written by Christoph Haizmann, a destitute artist in Bavaria. He believed that he had made pacts with the devil and sought exorcisims from the Church. Freud wrote about his case as have medical historians. Some see clear evidence for schizophrenia while others urge caution. Request this book from EZ Borrow.
A treatise on insanity : in which are contained the principles of a new and more practical nosology of maniacal disorders than has yet been offered to the public ... by Philippe Pinel
Publication Date: 1806
Pinel was the physician-in-chief at the Salpêtrière Hospice. He wrote this treatise in 1800 and defined four groups of disorders: melancholy, mania, dementia, and mental retardation. He urged humane care and treatment. Digital copy on HathiTrust. Log in as a member of Haverford College to download the book.
Under That Calamity by John Perceval; Lindsey Grubbs (Editor)
- This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
ISBN: 9781941360637
Publication Date: 2022-05-24
"In the year 1830, I was unfortunately deprived of the use of reason. This calamity befell me about Christmas." John Perceval was institutionalized against his will for three years. His memoir was first published in 1838 in London with the aim of exposing the inhumane treatments inflicted on patients. Features annotation and perspectives from Lindsey Grubbs, a scholar of the cultural history and contemporary ethics of psychology.
Women, Madness and Sin in Early Modern England by Katherine Hodgkin
- This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
ISBN: 9780754630180
Publication Date: 2010-10-28
A case study of the complex psychic relationship between religion and madness in early 17th-century England, the narrative presented here is a rare, detailed autobiographical account of one woman's experience with mental disorder.

Primary Sources Collections

There are some online collections available for historical texts. Haverford has access to subscription databases like Early English Books Online (EEBO). Other primary source collections like Gallica from France's Bibliothèque national are open access on the Web.

Medical Heritage Library
The Medical Heritage Library, a digital curation collaborative among some of the world’s leading medical libraries, promotes free and open access to quality historical resources in medicine. The MHL’s growing collection of digitized medical rare books, pamphlets, journals, and films number in the tens of thousands, with representative works from each of the past six centuries, all of which are available here.
Example search: mental illness date:[1700 TO 1799]
Wellcome Collection
This major medical history library in London offers many open access copies of important texts from the early modern period as well as the 18th and 19th centuries. Search in the catalog and under Location choose Online. The license for individual titles determines the level of access, so not all online copies are available open access.
Bayerische StaatsBibliothek
The Bavarian State Library has a large collection of digitized books, broadsides and other material from the Early Modern period and other eras.
Burney Collection Newspapers Archive, 17th & 18th Century
- This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
Provides full text to the newspapers and news pamphlets gathered by the Reverend Charles Burney (1757-1817), representing the largest single collection of 17th and 18th century English news media. The 700 or so bound volumes of newspapers and news pamphlets were published mostly in London, however there are also some English provincial, Irish and Scottish papers, and a few examples from the American colonies, Europe and India.

Early English Books Online (EEBO)
- This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
Contains digital images of virtually every work printed in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and British North America and works in English printed elsewhere from 1473-1700. This collection contains about 100,000 of over 125,000 titles listed in Pollard & Redgrave's Short-Title Catalogue (1475-1640) and Wing's Short-Title Catalogue (1641-1700) and their revised editions, as well as the Thomason Tracts (1640-1661) collection and the Early English Books Tract Supplement. Includes books, pamphlets, manuscripts and newspapers.

Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO)
- This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
Search digitized versions of works published in the UK during the 18th century plus thousands from elsewhere. Includes books, pamphlets, essays, broadsides and more.
Gallica
Gallica is a digital library of French and francophone culture maintained by the Bibliothque nationale de France. Contains numerous electronic texts, images, maps, animation, and sound files of French and other publications in history, literature, science, philosophy, law, economics, and political science. Covers the Middle Ages to the present.

Medieval & Early Modern Sources Online
- This link opens in a new window
A collection of digitized editions of texts concerning economic, political, legal, and ecclesiastical history, such as treasury accounts, chronicles, papal registers, etc. Most are from England, Ireland, and Scotland, although some are from Milan and the New World.

Proceedings of the Old Bailey, 1674 to 1913
A fully searchable edition of the largest body of texts detailing the lives of non-elite people ever published, containing 197,745 criminal trials held at London's central criminal court.

Image Sources

ARTstor
- This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
A digital library that provides access to thousands of digital images derived from a variety of museum, library and archival collections. Images support a variety of disciplines including architecture, painting, sculpture, photography, decorative arts, and design. Coverage varies.

British Museum Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts
Searchable database of medieval and Renaissance manuscripts with descriptions of individual images.
MacKinney Collection of Medieval Medical Illustrations
Searchable database of medieval medical manuscript illustrations photographed by medieval historian MacKinney. Use the browse option and look at images by subject.
Index of Medieval Medical Images
This UCLA project aims to describe and index the content of all medieval manuscript images (up to the year 1500) with medical elements held in North American collections.
Wellcome Images
The Wellcome Library makes more than 40,000 images searchable online relating to medicine and social history. Note that the Advanced Search includes a year range option.

Rare Book Libraries

While some primary source books and other kinds of materials have been digitized, there are great numbers which exist only in print or manuscript, particularly when it comes to documents and records which are often in one unique copy. Visiting a rare book library will give you access to additional source material, as you can readily see from the resources on Friends Hospital here in Haverford's Special Collection Library.

Use the databases below to search for primary source material in special collection libraries.

ArchiveGrid
- This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
Provides over four million records describing archival materials, bringing together information about historical documents, personal papers, family histories, and more. Represents over 1,000 archival institutions, including libraries, museums and historical societies.
Consortium for History of Science, Technology and Medicine Special Collections Search
This group of 22 libraries and scholarly societies promotes research in the history of science. Their collections, many located in the Philadelphia area or East Coast cities, are available for you to use when making an on-site research trip. Use this federated search to see what kinds of materials in your subject area are available.
Worldcat.org
- This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
Worldcat represents the holdings of academic and public libraries on a global scale. There are over 500 million title records currently included. Libraries will often make a special effort to include their rare materials in WorldCat because those things are more difficult to find.