Queen Mary and Westfield College London University PhD Thesis ...

his appointment'63.
Therapy or neglect?
I have argued elsewhere that there was far more to the medical regime at Bethiem than the
therapeutic apathy and conservatism with which it has paradigmatically been associated164.
While I shall partially be reiterating that argument, I shall focus here on elaborating other as-
pects of care and treatment at the hospital, and on analyzing (rather more evenly) the limitations
of that provision.
Pace Scull, there is no doubt that the Governors and medical officers of Bethlem believed
and, indeed, confidently claimed, that they were curing patients. New governors were informed
that this was the function of Bethlem from the outset in their 'Charge'. Cure was emphasised as
the hospital's objective in Court orders for the admission of patients throughout the seventeenth
century. When Thomas Nurse was elected l3ethlem Physician in 1648 it was explicitly for cure
of the poore Lunatiques there" 65 . The hospital advertised itself repeatedly after the Civil War
as 'for keeping & curing distracted persons', or as the Reverend James Ibbetson put it in 1759,
'to rectify the disordered Mind by every method of cure', in the reports delivered as part of the
annual Spital Sermons for the royal hospitals of London. After the move to Moorfields, Bethlem
boasted, in these reports and in other commissioned publications, that around of its patients
were generally discharged 'cured" 66 . The Bethlem Physician, Edward Tyson, was rewarded and
loudly lauded by the assembled governors for 'the successful pains and Care [he had] taken.. .in
163 Yardley was a regular attender at the Court of Assistants in the 1630.; a major representative of the Society
in its disputes with the College of Physicians; made donations for various e,rpenditures of the Society & lent it
£so in 1632-3; served on a Committee appointed to inspect Lac Suiphuris at Apothecary's Hall, the preparation
of which was observed by his colleague, Meverall, the Bethiem Physician; gave a great deal of evidence in the
Quo Warranto proceedings against several members of the Company, in 1633-5. James was appointed Master
on 9 Oct 1655, serving until 30 Sept. 1656. See SACAM, eap. fols 38, 197, 311, 314, 330, 333-4, 28; C. R. B.
Barrett, The History of the Society of Apothecaries (London, Elliot Stock, 1905), 49, 54, 60, 136-8; Cecil Wall,
11. C. Cameron & E. Ashworth Underwood, A huistory of the Worshipful Society oJApothecsries (London, OUP,
1963), 60, 286.
164 See Andrew., 'Hardly a hospital...', forthcoming in Med,cine Y Charity.
165 BCGM, 21 July 1648, fol. 352.
166 During 1676-1705, 8 years for which reports have been found give an average of patients cured as a proportion
of those admitted at just over . During 1739-58, 5 years for whidi reports have been found give a slightly higher
average over . In 1789, Bethlem daimed to have cured more patients than it had admitted during the previous
year and to have buried only 10. See Spital sermons, Psalms of thanksgivings & 'True Reports' (listed in the
bibliography) for 1644-5, 1647-50, 1653, 1655-6, 1676, 1681, 1684-5, 1687-8, 1694, 1706, 1740-41, 1743, 1750,
1752, 1759, 1789; BCCM, 17 April 1644, lol. 102; E S. de Beer, 'The London hospitals in the seventeenth
century', in Notes & Qscries, Nov. 18, 1939; Bowen, HisloricsI Account, 6.
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