Dear Hadmess readers, two new articles recently published in the journal History of Psychiatry may be of interest to you.

The first, entitled Bridging the Gap by Microscoping the Mind: Mental Anthropometry, Experimental Psychopathology, and the Scientific Ideal of Psychiatry at the Eastern Illinois Hospital for the Insane, 1870s–1910s, is authored by Catriel Fierro. The second, Malaria Therapy for Neurosyphilis at Mont Park Hospital for the Insane in Australia, 1927–1928, was written by Alison Clayton.

Please find below the abstracts of these two publications.

Bridging the gap by microscoping the mind: Mental anthropometry, experimental psychopathology, and the scientific ideal of psychiatry at the Eastern Illinois Hospital for the Insane, 1870s–1910s, by Catriel Fierro

“Drawing on heretofore overlooked archival documents and primary sources, this article reconstructs and contextualizes William O. Krohn’s psychological laboratory at the Eastern Illinois Hospital for the Insane in Kankakee between 1897 and 1899, the first of its kind to be established within a U.S. asylum. Situated against the backdrop of psychiatry’s public crisis of scientific legitimacy in the 1890s and Kankakee’s own history of political upheaval and administrative instability, Krohn’s laboratory represented an early, ambitious attempt to bridge institutional psychiatry and abnormal psychology through experimental psychopathology. Its brief history illuminates both the internal limitations of psychometric psychiatry and the structural and material constraints of the asylum as a site for scientific inquiry, especially when contrasted with the then-emerging psychopathic hospital”.

Malaria therapy for neurosyphilis at Mont Park Hospital for the insane in Australia, 1927–1928, by Alison Clayton

“A century ago, malaria therapy for general paralysis of the insane was a celebrated Nobel Prize-winning psychiatric treatment widely used across the globe. However, in recent years, its legacy has come under increasing scrutiny, with some historians and physicians questioning the claims of it being an effective treatment. This paper, utilizing published accounts and medical record archives, describes malaria therapy for neurosyphilis as conducted by psychiatrist, Reginald Ellery at Victoria’s Mont Park Hospital for the Insane, 1927–1928. It also evaluates Ellery’s claims about malaria therapy’s effectiveness. This research delineates several clinical and research-related factors – such as diagnostic drift, adjunct interventions, and healthy-patient selection – that likely contributed to an overestimation of malaria therapy’s effectiveness. Additionally, it demonstrates that patient outcomes as reported in the medical records are notably less positive than described by Ellery in his published accounts. Consequentially, the findings of this study do not support the claims of malaria being an effective treatment for neurosyphilis”.