Bedlam Quotes

“In the words of Euripides, ‘those whom the Gods wish to destroy, first they make mad’.”
― Catharine Arnold, Bedlam: London and Its Mad

“Nebuchadnezzar II (King of Babylon 605–562 BC) experienced an episode of insanity which lasted for seven years. The king, who had overseen a magnificent building programme which included the famous Hanging Gardens of Babylon, found himself humbled by God for boasting about his achievements. His punishment took the form of believing he was an ox, a condition known as ‘boanthropy’, and he lived like a wild animal for seven years, before making a full recovery and being restored to power.”
― Catharine Arnold, Bedlam: London and Its Mad

“As an architectural marvel, Bethlem appeared in at least thirty-six tourist guides in 1681.”
― Catharine Arnold, Bedlam: London and Its Mad

“But Turner was not without his peccadilloes: a magistrate, he considered it his civic duty to witness every prostitute he sentenced being flogged at Bridewell, moving one commentator to observe: ‘Oh, Bridewell! What a shame thy walls reproaches. Poor Molls are whipp’d, while rich ones ride in coaches!”
― Catharine Arnold, Bedlam: London and Its Mad

“In February 1660, a Lady Monck visited the hospital, and received this greeting from one of the ‘phanatiques’: Most noble lady, now we see The world turns round as well as we. Whilst you adorn this place we know No greater happiness below, Than to behold the sweet delight Of him that will restore our right, Let George know we are not so mad, But we can love an honest lad.64”
― Catharine Arnold, Bedlam: London and Its Mad

“Meverall, meanwhile, had his own claim to fame in the death stakes. At the age of twenty-three, the young doctor succumbed to an attack of smallpox, and every aperture in his sick room was carefully closed up. He became unconscious due to lack of oxygen, and was assumed to have died. It was not until his body was being prepared for burial that he was exposed to fresh air, and came to his senses just in time to escape being buried alive.”
― Catharine Arnold, Bedlam: London and Its Mad

“The Anatomy of Melancholy was regarded by Sir William Osler, Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford (1905–19), as the greatest medical treatise every written by a layman.”
― Catharine Arnold, Bedlam: London and Its Mad

“Paucis notus, paucioribus ignotus, Hic jacet Democritus Junior, Cui vitam dedit et mortem Melancholia Known to few, unknown to even fewer, Here lies Democritus Junior, To whom Melancholia Gave life and death.”
― Catharine Arnold, Bedlam: London and Its Mad

“Melancholy in this sense is the character of Mortality.’34 ‘And he that knows not this, & is not armed to endure it, is not fit to live in this world.’35”
― Catharine Arnold, Bedlam: London and Its Mad

“Burton makes it quite clear that the ‘distinguished’ nature of melancholy makes it superior to other forms of madness, as evidence of a refined nature. It is melancholy, after all, which afflicts scholars and poets: ‘Melancholy men of all others are most witty.’32 Despite the drawbacks of the condition, his ambivalent attitude prefigures that of many modern depressives, who regard the disease as an essential component of their character, even their creativity.”
― Catharine Arnold, Bedlam: London and Its Mad

“Fifteen years later, in 1601, Thomas Wright’s The Passions of the Minde was devoted to showing man how wretched he had become through his inability to control his passions. This study, designed to help man know himself in all his depravity, emphasised sin rather than salvation, claiming that the animal passions prevented reason, rebelled against virtue and, like ‘thornie briars sprung from the infected roote of original sinne’, caused mental and physical ill health.20 Despite its punitive message, the book went into further editions in 1604, 1620, 1621 and 1628, suggesting that the seventeenth-century reader was a glutton for punishment.”
― Catharine Arnold, Bedlam: London and Its Mad

“(the term ‘lunatic’ derives from luna, the Latin word for moon). Many writers, from antiquity onwards, maintained that the mad were directly affected by the phases of the moon, with the full moon being the cause of the greatest agitation.”
― Catharine Arnold, Bedlam: London and Its Mad

“If a woman possessed the unfortunate combination of delicate skin, thin eyebrows, a curving spine and a ‘sharp tongue’, it would be almost impossible for a man to refrain from beating her.”
― Catharine Arnold, Bedlam: London and Its Mad

“Even if we do not suffer from religious mania, unrequited love, loneliness or jealousy, most readers can identify with Burton’s account of information overload over three centuries before the invention of the internet, an extraordinary broadside which is worth quoting in full: I hear new news every day, and those ordinary rumours of war, plagues, fires, inundations, thefts, murders, massacres, meteors, comets, spectrums, prodigies, apparitions, of towns taken cities besieged in France, Germany, Turkey, Persia, Poland &c. daily musters and preparations, and such like, which these tempestuous times afford, battles fought, so many men slain, monomachies, shipwrecks, piracies, and sea-fights, peace, leagues, stratagems, and fresh alarms. A vast confusion of vows, wishes, actions, edicts, petitions, lawsuits, pleas, laws, proclamations, complaints, grievances, are daily brought to our ears. New books every day, pamphlets, currantoes, stories, whole catalogues of volumes of all sorts, new paradoxes, opinions, schisms, heresies, controversies in philosophy, religion &c. Now come tidings of weddings, maskings, mummeries, entertainments, jubilees, embassies, tilts and tournaments, trophies, triumphs, revels, sports, plays; then again, as in a new shifted scene, treasons, cheating tricks, robberies, enormous villanies in all kinds, funerals, burials, deaths of Princes, new discoveries, expeditions; now comical then tragical matters. To-day we hear of new Lords and officers created, to-morrow of some great men deposed, and then again of fresh honours conferred; one is let loose, another imprisoned; one purchaseth, another breaketh; he thrives, his neighbour turns bankrupt; now plenty, then again dearth and famine; one runs, another rides, wrangles, laughs, weeps &c. Thus I daily hear, and such like, both private and public news.37 And that way, Burton reminds us, that way madness lies…”
― Catharine Arnold, Bedlam: London and Its Mad

“Soranus of Ephesus (AD 98–138) seems to have discovered lithium as a cure for manic depression by recommending that severely disturbed patients be treated with the alkaline waters of the town, which contained high levels of lithium salts. A more radical approach consisted of a pioneering form of electric shock treatment: the Greeks used the ‘electric torpedo’, or eels, as a cure for headaches, believing that ‘the touch of a living torpedo stupefied or blunted the acute sense of pain’. An oil was prepared from the dead fish for use when no live ones were available.”
― Catharine Arnold, Bedlam: London and Its Mad

“Hebrew monotheism also dictated that madness, like physical illness, was a punishment from God. Deuteronomy named insanity as one of the many curses that God will inflict on those who do not obey him (along with haemorrhoids, the scab and the itch).13”
― Catharine Arnold, Bedlam: London and Its Mad

“For, as FitzMary knelt to pray, An angel whispered in his ear ‘The Holy Land is far away, Prepare another Manger here. Build you a second House of Bread In this fair city of renown, And God His Son,’ the angel said, ‘Shall come to dwell in London Town.’ So spake the angel, bending low Reddens laudes Domino.”
― Catharine Arnold, Bedlam: London and Its Mad

“Asylums had originated in France in the seventeenth century, under the influence of Louis XIV, who, during the 1660s, locked up anyone likely to oppose him in a giant police operation described by Foucault as ‘the Great Confinement’, when over 6,000 people were incarcerated in the Hôpital Général.”
― Catharine Arnold, Bedlam: London and Its Mad

“Against all odds, Bethlem survived. The Bishopsgate building endured the Civil War, the Great Plague of 1665 and the Fire of London a year later, after which the hospital’s governors realised that it needed a new home. In 1676 ‘New Bedlam’ opened in Moorfields, with patients transferred to a ‘palace beautiful’ designed by the genius polymath Robert Hooke.”
― Catharine Arnold, Bedlam: London and Its Mad

“Bethlem became a byword for thieving, degeneracy and institutionalised corruption. One of the most notorious employees was Peter the Porter, who left his miserable charges to starve and shiver while he traded in their food and bedding.”
― Catharine Arnold, Bedlam: London and Its Mad