Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- 1 Inspecting Great Britain: German Psychiatrists' Views of British Asylums in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century
- 2 Permeating National Boundaries: European and American Influences on the Emergence of “Medico-Pedagogy” in Late Victorian and Edwardian Britain
- 3 Organizing Psychiatric Research in Munich (1903–1925): A Psychiatric Zoon Politicon between State Bureaucracy and American Philanthropy
- 4 Germany and the Making of “English” Psychiatry: The Maudsley Hospital, 1908–1939
- 5 Patterns in Transmitting German Psychiatry to the United States: Smith Ely Jelliffe and the Impact of World War I
- 6 “Beyond the Clinical Frontiers”: The American Mental Hygiene Movement, 1910–1945
- 7 Mental Hygiene in Britain during the First Half of the Twentieth Century: The Limits of International Influence
- 8 Psychiatry in Munich and Yale, ca. 1920–1935: Mutual Perceptions and Relations, and the Case of Eugen Kahn (1887–1973)
- 9 Explorations of Scottish, German, and American Psychiatry: The Work of Helen Boyle and Isabel Hutton in the Treatment of Noncertifiable Mental Disorders in England, 1899–1939
- 10 Welsh Psychiatry during the Interwar Years, and the Impact of American and German Inspirations and Resources
- 11 Alien Psychiatrists: The British Assimilation of Psychiatric Refugees, 1930–1950
- Selected Bibliography
- List of Contributors
- Index
1 - Inspecting Great Britain: German Psychiatrists' Views of British Asylums in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- 1 Inspecting Great Britain: German Psychiatrists' Views of British Asylums in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century
- 2 Permeating National Boundaries: European and American Influences on the Emergence of “Medico-Pedagogy” in Late Victorian and Edwardian Britain
- 3 Organizing Psychiatric Research in Munich (1903–1925): A Psychiatric Zoon Politicon between State Bureaucracy and American Philanthropy
- 4 Germany and the Making of “English” Psychiatry: The Maudsley Hospital, 1908–1939
- 5 Patterns in Transmitting German Psychiatry to the United States: Smith Ely Jelliffe and the Impact of World War I
- 6 “Beyond the Clinical Frontiers”: The American Mental Hygiene Movement, 1910–1945
- 7 Mental Hygiene in Britain during the First Half of the Twentieth Century: The Limits of International Influence
- 8 Psychiatry in Munich and Yale, ca. 1920–1935: Mutual Perceptions and Relations, and the Case of Eugen Kahn (1887–1973)
- 9 Explorations of Scottish, German, and American Psychiatry: The Work of Helen Boyle and Isabel Hutton in the Treatment of Noncertifiable Mental Disorders in England, 1899–1939
- 10 Welsh Psychiatry during the Interwar Years, and the Impact of American and German Inspirations and Resources
- 11 Alien Psychiatrists: The British Assimilation of Psychiatric Refugees, 1930–1950
- Selected Bibliography
- List of Contributors
- Index
Summary
In the nineteenth century British asylums were large-scale buildings with luxurious equipment; they showed an extraordinary cleanliness that only the asylums in Switzerland could match; they provided the inmates with good or very good nutrition; and statistical registration of the insane had attained an enviable quality. Family care in Scotland was a model for the whole of Europe.
This was the image that German psychiatrists visiting England and Scotland in the mid-nineteenth century had when they praised the British care of the insane. Such enthusiastic assessments were not only related to the mental health care system but also to surgery and public health. In 1836 the physician Adolf Mühry from Hanover praised English surgeons for their practical skills and pragmatic attitude. In 1873 the hygienist Max von Pettenkofer praised the English public health system and the sanitary conditions of British cities. The nineteenth-century British health care system was obviously seen as a highly attractive model for Germany. This view of British physicians resonated very well with a broader German cultural and political orientation toward the United Kingdom.
A mutual exchange of ideas between British and German psychiatrists in the second half of the eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth century has already been described by Max Neuburger more than half a century ago. He referred to the translations by German doctors of several British works on madness and related themes and, in a few cases, vice versa.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- International Relations in PsychiatryBritain, Germany, and the United States to World War II, pp. 12 - 29Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2010