The Art of Asylum-Keeping: Thomas Story Kirkbride and the Origins of American Psychiatry

by Nancy Tomes

The Art of Asylum-Keeping is a social history of medical practice in a private nineteenth-century asylum, the Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane in Philadelphia. It recreates everyday life in the asylum and explores its social, as well as its scientific, legitimation. Using as its focus the career of Thomas Story Kirkbride, the hospital's chief physician from 1840 to 1883 and a founder of the American Psychiatric Association, Nancy Tomes examines the social context of early asylum treatment as well as that of the patients' families.

By analyzing the medical practice and philosophy of this influential figure in early asylum medicine, Tomes relates the inner history of the asylum in the context of contemporary psychiatry and gender-related issues.

Genres: Psychology, History, Mental Health

424 pages, Hardcover

First published May 18, 1994

Reviews

[Shala Howell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Full of great info, but the presentation of that info gets a little dull in the last chapter.