Introduction

Abstract

In this ‘Introduction’ Wallis highlights the importance of the asylum patient’s body to the study of mental disease in the late nineteenth century. The chapter questions why the body is often left out of histories of psychiatry, arguing that this is due to long-standing perceptions of the Victorian asylum as a place of incarceration and harsh treatment. Wallis asks how we can bring the body more meaningfully into histories of the asylum and suggests that we may achieve this by looking at scientific practices in the asylum. ‘Introduction’ concludes with a case study of the West Riding Lunatic Asylum, showing that this was an institution that fostered a research culture that was particularly concerned with the links between the body and mental disease.