Madmen

Kirjan Madmen (2006) on kirjoittanut Roy Porter. Kirjan kieli on englanti, ja sen on kustantanut The History Press Ltd. Kirja on laajuudeltaan 336 sivua ja se on nidottu.

What was it like to be insane in the Georgian England of Mary Wollstonecraft and Coleridge (himself afflicted with madness? ) How were our eighteenth-century ancestors confined and how were they treated by the fledgling psychiatric 'profession'? Indeed, how was the most famous mad person of the century - Shelley's 'old, mad, blind, despised king' George III - treated before his final descent into senility in 1808? Best-selling popular historian Roy Porter looks at the bizarre and savage practices of mad-doctors treating those afflicted by 'manias', ranging from huge doses of opium, blood-letting and cold-water immersion to beatings, confinement in cages and blistering. The author reveals how Bethlem - the London asylum created to care for the capital's mentally sick - was riddled with sadism and embezzlement, and if that wasn't dehumanising enough, jeering, ogling sightseers were permitted entry - for a fee of course.