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

is.. .as manageable [and, by implication, as curable] as many other distempers' and that the
mad should not 'be abandoned' or imprisoned 'as criminals or nusances to the society'; arrives
late in the Treatise, after a rather traditional and not profoundly confident overview. Whereas
Battie pronounced 'hereditary' and 'Original Madness...incurable by art', Monro, claimed that
'hereditary complaints...are often treated with success', and accused Battie of extending the
boundaries of incurability with his definition of 'original madness'302 . Despite his generally
sympathetic tone towards sufferers, Battie's view was often not only traditional, but negative
and occasionally even harsh. He refused to see suicide as 'pardonable' under any circumstances',
and advised that 'bodily pain may be excited to good purpose' in treating the insane, old advice
which Monro strongly repudiated 303 . Ills attitude to madness as misassociation of ideas brought
him to an already familiar and pessimistic view of the imagination, warning that the madman's
attribution of his own disease could not be trusted, and declaring that 'Chimaeras. .exist no
where except in the brain of a Madman' and their causes were unknowable304 . At best Battie
hoped 'that the peculiar antidote of Madness is reserved in Nature's 8tore', although he doubted
it305 . When I3attie blamed the prevailing ignorance with regard to insanity and its treatment
on its monopolising by 'Empirics' and 'a few select Physicians', on secrecy and a 'want of proper
communication', or what was essentially a closed debate, he was not merely referring to the
Physicians of Bethlem, of course, but to a wide range of practitioners who proudly touted, but
jealously guarded, their specifics, potions and miracle remedies306.
On the other hand, Monro was plainly not stung into so sharp and immediate a rejoinder by
Dattie's traditionalism. In denying the importance of causation and of any nosology of mental
illness (which for Monro was merely one disease, with many symptoms); in rejecting the place
of 'anxiety' on the spectrum of mental illness; and in dismissing the utility of theorising on
the nature of insanity; Monro severely misread the climate of the times, and stood resolutely
against the tide of change or advancement in the study and treatment of insanity 307. Mo'nro's
302 Treajise, 59, 67; compare Remark., 24-5.
303 Treatise, 85; Remark., 46-7.
304 Tree gi,e, 37, 42.
305 !btd, 71-2
306 2-3.
307 Battie's stress on divining the aetiology of madness as a starting point for cure is a constant theme of his
Treatise, but see esp. 73, 88. This was actuaily translated into practice at St. Luke's, where in distinction from
Bethiem, standard admission forms for the hospital required from the certifying practitioner a some account of
312