Muscle

Abstract

‘Muscle’ considers how late nineteenth-century asylum doctors incorporated physiological theories and methods into their work. This chapter draws attention to the wide-ranging physical effects of conditions such as general paralysis (neurosyphilis), which often had serious socio-economic consequences for patients and their families. In addition, ‘Muscle’ explores how—given contemporary associations between general paralysis and sexual immorality—the physical signs of disease were bound up with ideas about morality and willpower. Wallis recounts how Victorian asylum doctors investigated the muscles and their movements, considering contemporary medical technologies and methods of examination. This chapter concludes by looking at the role of the asylum patient in such examinations, arguing that in many cases the investigation of mental disease was a collaborative exercise between doctor and patient.