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

Bethlem Physician and application made to the Lords for his removal. IL was another six months
before Taylor was removed, however, the patient even petitioning the King himself to this end.
With the Lords deciding that he 'persisteth in his Blasphemies', 'Lend[ing] to the Destruction
of all Religion and Government' (possibly, on the grounds of this petition), Taylor was only
removed in order to be prosecuted in the temporal courts, and may ultimately have wished he had
remained a madman2ss. Similar offenders, like Abraham Baron/Barrow, committed to Newgate
and 'to worke' at Bridewehl; for 'being an idle vagrant p[er]son and cannot give an Accompt of
his Life & coversacon a Blasphemer' who 'saith hee is A Priest Prophett & King'; despite an
acknowledgment that 'hee seemes distracted', may, likewise, have been better off when recognised
as insane and transferred to Bethlem 289 . Yet, there is little doubting Macdonald's argument that
only after the Restoration did 'the idea that religious enthusiasm was a form of insanity.. .become
a ruling-class shiboleth'. Indeed, it was only from the latter seventeenth century, also, that large
numbers of such enthusiasts began to be confined in Bethlem290 . According to William Black;
tabulating information provided to him by the Bethiem Apothecary, John Gozna; by the latter
eighteenth century, 'Religion and Methodism' were the fourth most common cause of insanity
amongst admissions to the hospital, accounting for over 10% of all causes ascribed 291 . The acute
negativity with which enthusiasm was increasingly regarded was even reflected in the pessimism
of medical prognoses, particularly those of orthodox clergymen, like William Pargeter, who
declared (1798) 'we can scarcely expect enthusiastic madness to be relieved, much less cured',
while individuals unhinged by Methodism were conceived also as highly prone to suicide292.
In general terms, however, the decline of fatalistic, providential interpretations of insanity had
also coincided with, and allowed for, an enhanced belief in the curability of insanity through
288 see warrant of committal dated 14 May 1675, at back of BCGM, 1674-78; BCGM, 19 May 1675, foL 129;
chap. 5; U, xii, 688a, 691a, 700b-701a; xiii, lSb-19a, 26a; & for Taylor's petition, see Brajre MSS, 3, if. 96-7.
289 BCGM, 19 & 28 Nov. 1673, 23 Jan. 1674, loIs 584, 590, 610.
290 See Macdonald, 'Insanity and the realities of history', in Murray & Turner (eds), Lecl,rea on the History
of Psychiatry, 60-81.
291 Dssaerta g,on on Insanity, 18-19.
292 Pargeter, O1,ervaiona, 35-7, 79, 135-7. Haslam, however, barely mentioned religious enthusiasm in his
Obser,ahons of 1798, very few of the cases he discussed being ascribed to this cause, although he plainly shared
the orthodox anglican view that 'the infinite wisdom and power of the Deity' was irrefutable, but unfathomable;
see op.ci, 47-8, 100, 104. Clearly, as is evident in both John Monro's & Haslam's writings (by contrast with
William Battie), such religious views contributed to a rather dismissive or apologetic attitude towards more
metaphysical approathes to medicine.
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