Madness in Civilization : A Cultural History of Insanity from the Bible to Freud, from the Madhouse to Modern Medicine

Author: Scull, Andrew

Social & cultural history

Published on 30 January 2020 by Thames & Hudson Ltd in the United Kingdom.

Paperback / softback | 448 pages, 84 Illustrations, black and white; 44 Illustrations, colour
174 x 420 x 34 | 418g

This ambitious volume, worldwide in scope and ranging from antiquity to the present, examines the human encounter with Unreason in all its manifestations, the challenges it poses to society and our responses to it. In twelve chapters organized chronologically from the Bible to Freud, from exorcism to mesmerism, from Bedlam to Victorian asylums, from the theory of humours to modern pharmacology, Andrew Scull writes compellingly about madness, its meanings, its consequences and our attempts to understand and treat it.