Tag Archives: childbirth insanity

Early Thoughts on Insanity

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Insane Asylum at Raleigh, North Carolina

Insane Asylum at Raleigh, North Carolina

The more settled eastern states generated most of the research and theory concerning insanity in the 1800s. Most asylum superintendents were both born and educated in the east, and the region produced and trained most asylum superintendents for many years. North Carolina, for example, did not even see a published paper on the topic of insanity from its state medical society until 1871. That paper, “Report of a Case of Violent Cerebral Excitement Relieved by Bromide of Potassium” involved a five-year-old boy. Only the standards of the time could have considered the child insane.

Death by Childbirth Insanity

Death by Childbirth Insanity

The next paper was entitled, “Mania Transitoria” and described momentary insanity that befell people who were otherwise aware of their surroundings and actions. The doctor believed that this transitory state of insanity was related to heredity and certain physical diseases. That theory makes the condition sound like epilepsy, but the author seemed to think that it was something else.

Hysterical Epilepsy, circa 1876

Hysterical Epilepsy, circa 1876

Dr. Grissom attributed the condition to masturbation and petit mal epilepsy as well as the former factors, so it is difficult to know what he is describing. Since many people suffering epilepsy were considered insane during this era, it is quite possible that these episodes of transitory mania sent many otherwise capable men and women to an insane asylum.

The Root of Women’s Mental Disorders

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Death Caused by Childbirth Insanity

Male alienists often thought that women were more susceptible to certain forms of insanity because of their female body organs (see last post). In the American Journal of Insanity, Dr. Fleetwood Churchill describes the evolution of merry childhood into womanhood, when a female becomes more serious and feels more deeply. “In short, under the influence of bodily development, her mind has expanded,” he says. In an article he published titled “On the Mental Disorders of Pregnancy and Childbed,” Churchill quotes other doctors; one noted that “insanity and epilepsy are often connected with menstruation,” and gave a case where a woman who had been confined for sixteen years, suddenly recovered when her periods ceased.

 

In a somewhat peculiar case in which the modern reader might find more than the doctor apparently did, a girl of 17 who had menstruated regularly for a year, suddenly stopped. Her mind became clouded, she spoke of herself as a castaway and doomed, and became completely insane. “Neither medicine nor change of air and scene did her any good,” said the doctor whom Churchill quoted. There was a happy ending, though. “The menses suddenly re-appeared, after eight or ten months absence. and she immediately recovered her mental health.”

Lydia Pinkham, Whose Patent Medicine Vegetable Compound Cured Female Problems

 

A Female Medicine

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