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

from brute creation and what inhibited that distinction. It seems likely that the anatomical
experiments of the Bethlem Physicians were drawing them towards a greater appreciation, if only
a partial view, of insanity as brain dysfunction caused by lesion. Whereas Allen communicated
an account to the Royal Society 'of the loss of part of a man'8 brain without any prejudice
to the patient', Tyson spoke before the Society and published papers in the Transaclions on
postmortem examinations of an infant and an adult born with malformations of the brain, and
on the preservation of brain tissue 193. While I have discovered no evidence that the work of
Allen and Tyson was followed-up or furthered by subsequent Bethlem Physicians, from about
1765, there was a mortuary (commonly and colourfully referred to as the 'Bone House' or 'Dead
House') and, sometime before this date, a 'Surgery' at the hospital, where such examinations
could certainly have been performed, as they were with great assiduity by the Surgeon, Bryan
Crowther, and the Apothecary, John Haslam, during the latter eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries 194 . Although Allen, Tyson and their contemporaries were chasing an elusive spectre in
their preoccupation with the condition of the pineal gland, watery deposits on the brain, brain
tumours, el a!, and although Crowther's and Haslam's considerably more extensive researches
were essentially barking up the same tree, their investigations are still at odds with the customary
view of an ossified medical regime cloyed in apathy and tradition'95.
Not all of Bethiem's remedies were as tired and old as they have seemed to historians.
Bathing was certainly not a new therapy when it was introduced to Bethlem in the 1680s, yet,
as! have argued elsewhere' 96 , this was a time of rediscovered enthusiasm for the benefits of water
therapy in the medical world, with the publication of treatises by Sir John Floyer and others, and
193 Tyson was clearly interested in brain function throughout the animal kingdom. See Birch, Hisorp Of the
Royal Society, vol. ii, 252-3; Hooke, P.T., vol. 19, 533-7; RSCJB, iii, 289 Li ix, 61-2 Li 264; R.S. Letter Book,
vol. 13, ltr of Tyson to John Wallis, 16 Jan. 1701, 137-8.
194 See BCGM, 20 June 1765, lola 136-7; BSCM, 29 Jan. 1780 Li 24 April 1790; CLRO MS Comp. City
Lands Plan 303, reproduced as Fig. 3a, being a 'plan of the premises at Little Moorgate adjoining Old Bethiem
(meaning the Moorfields buildingi Hospital' (n.d. c1790), showing the 'Dead House', carpenters shop, infirmary,
laundry, apothecary's house Li shop, Li the men's exercise yard; Crowther, Practical Remark, on Insanity: to
wksch is Added, a Commentary on the Di,section of the Brain, of Maniacs; with some Accosnt of Diseases
Incident to the Insane (London, 1811); Li Haslam, Ob,er,ation, on Insanity: with Practical Remarks on the
Disease and an Accotnt of the Morbid Appearances on Dsssect.on (London, 1798), 36-133.
195 The minutes of Royal Society meetings also evidence Allen'. interest in 'hydrophobia', while he had also
carried out experiments on certain 'Medicinal waters near London', known for their 'purging' properties. See
Birdi, History of, ii, 392; RSCJB, v, 117, Li Royal Society Misc. M.S. entitled 'Dr. Aliens paper about purging
water'.
196 Andrews, '"hardly a hospital" '.
290