Dear H-Madness readers,
The latest issue of History of Psychiatry has just been released. Please find below the list of articles included in this edition

A Georgian tragedy of madness and mystery: Louisa, the ‘maid of the haystack’, by Leonard Smith

Abstract
In 1777 a strange, distracted young woman took up residence under a haystack in a village outside Bristol, attracting much local attention. ‘Louisa’ gained wider celebrity after the writer Hannah More publicised her plight in the national press. She subsequently spent several years in a private madhouse and then the lunatic ward of Guy’s Hospital, where she died in 1800. It was generally presumed that Louisa was of noble foreign birth and possibly the hapless victim of family intrigue or even sexual exploitation, her mysterious story being interpreted as a contemporary morality tale. In actuality, recorded circumstances demonstrated quite sympathetic communal responses toward victims of insanity, as well as different options for providing care and treatment in 18th-century England.

James Cowles Prichard, an early Victorian psychiatrist, by Margaret M Crump

Abstract
James Cowles Prichard of the Red Lodge: A Life in Science During the Age of Improvement traces Prichard’s contributions to the development of psychiatric theory and the psychiatric profession. It also explores his broader range of scientific interests clearly set in cultural and personal context. Armed with his Edinburgh MD, he published innovative anthropological textbooks demonstrating the unity and single origin of the human species. As physician to Bristol’s workhouse/lunatic asylum, he studied his captive patients’ neurological and psychiatric conditions, avidly collected case histories, gathered medical statistics widely and mined Continental psychiatric literature to publish influential works on neurology and psychological medicine, notably formulating the condition called moral insanity. Appointed to the Lunacy Commission, he published a manual of psychiatric jurisprudence and participated in the development of asylumdom.

“To discuss and exchange views upon professional topics”: Conversazione at the West Riding Asylum, 1871–1875, by Andrew J. Larner

Abstract
From 1871 to 1875, a series of annual meetings termed medical conversazione was held at the West Riding Pauper Lunatic Asylum in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, organised by the Medical Superintendent, James Crichton-Browne. This article examines the setting, content, reception, and purposes of these meetings, using reportage from the local popular press to supplement the relatively limited accounts published in contemporary medical journals. The evidence indicates that the conversazione provided educational opportunity for invited local practitioners by showcasing the clinical and experimental research work of the Asylum. Hence these meetings showed some resemblance to modern medical meetings devoted to diseases of the brain. However, in addition they provided spectacle and entertainment, akin to the theatrical productions also hosted at the Asylum.

The short tenure and long legacy of interior secretary Stanley K. Hathaway, by Jacob M. Appel

Abstract
The second half of the 20th century saw significant progress toward the destigmatization of psychiatric illness and the embrace of mental health care by the American public. Attitudes toward political leaders and candidates with psychiatric diagnoses also evolved during this period—although not at the same pace. From the 1940s through the early 1970s, such diagnoses damaged the careers of prominent officials including Secretary of Defense James Forrestal, Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater and Democratic vice-presidential nominee Thomas Eagleton. By the 1980s and 1990s, candidates like Tom Turnipseed and Lawton Chiles increasingly embraced candor with regard to their psychiatric diagnoses and histories, and voters often proved forgiving. A transitional event in this development was the now largely forgotten hospitalization of Gerald Ford’s Secretary of the Interior, Stanley K. Hathaway, for depression in 1975. This paper examines the Hathaway case and argues that Ford’s willingness to stand by Hathaway proved a turning point in the embrace of politicians with psychiatric illnesses by the American electorate.

Richard Rows (1866–1925) and “functional mental illnesses”: The interface between psychiatry and neurology, 1912–1926, by Andrew J. Larner

Abstract
Richard Rows may be an unfamiliar name to historians of psychiatry today, other than for his role as superintendent of the Red Cross Military Hospital at Maghull, near Liverpool, during the First World War. Accordingly, this paper attempts a conspectus of Rows’ career in order to contextualise the psychotherapeutic approach he developed, not only to “shell-shock” patients during the War but also to “functional mental illnesses” encountered in subsequent civilian practice. This examination shows that although Rows adopted some Freudian or quasi-Freudian psychological vocabulary and techniques, as did many of his contemporaries, he also had a long-standing commitment to a physiological conceptualisation of brain disorders. For Rows, this was not incompatible with, but complementary to, his psychodynamic approach in clinical encounters. His work extended beyond the limits of psychiatry to adopt perspectives originating with contemporary neurologists and experimental neurophysiologists.

Revisiting Eugène Minkowski’s concept of schizophrenic melancholia, by Francisco Cunha, Sandra Carreiro Borges and Luís Madeira

Abstract
This study revisits Eugène Minkowski’s concept of schizophrenic melancholia, emphasizing its relevance to contemporary psychiatry. Through a phenomenological lens, Minkowski highlighted how depressive symptoms in schizophrenia are not merely secondary but intrinsic to the disorder, deeply intertwined with disruptions in time, space, and self-experience. By examining clinical cases, theoretical analyses, and existing literature, this research explores Minkowski’s idea of the “loss of vital contact with reality” as a framework for understanding the existential dimensions of schizophrenia. His insights bridge psychopathology and philosophy, offering valuable perspectives for integrating subjective patient experiences into modern psychiatric approaches. Minkowski’s legacy underscores the need for holistic, patient-centered care that addresses both clinical symptoms and the underlying existential disruptions.