I read this over 2 days. I found it incredibly interesting. In this new book, Juliana Cummings first questions what behaviours and characteristics define insanity and leads us through a comprehensive history of insanity and the asylum from the early treatment and care of mental illness in the Middle Ages and early modern period through to the closure of mental institutions in the twentieth century.

This book was a great survey of mental health treatment. Thank you to @netgalley for the chance to read. It has interesting history and while I studied a great deal of it in school, the refresher was good.

I wanted to give feedback even before having finished reading this book - I'm a bit slow at reading at times so did not want to wait that long.
This book is amazing - if you enjoy learning of historical medical practices and beliefs, this will go down very well for you.
The book combines deep research with excellent entertaining writing. It drew me in and i already gasped a few times at the ideas people (men?) Had about the female conditions. Funny and grimin places, i guess it will continue in the same vein throughout.
I especially loved how the research was worldwide, acknowledging many countries' contributions.
I'm really looking forward to finishing this, and would definitely recommend it for anyone with interest in the history of mental health treatments.

This is the first book that I have read by this author however I thoroughly enjoyed it. I loved the authors style of writing, it was easy to follow and covered the facts without the need to resort to add in opinions or made-up stories in order to illustrate the point. The book was well researched and provided interesting and important details. I have read many books on this area however there were still things that I got from this. I also enjoyed some of the topics covered especially the chapter on eugenics as this is not always covered in books about this topic. The chapters covered the topic well, without excess rambling detail. I would certainly recommend this to lovers of history and those interested in the topic of mental health, I would also look out for this author again.

I like the titles Pen & Sword History publishes a lot, they tend to pick interesting micro-history topics and make them accessible for the general public; and as a layperson with a lifelong interest in history, I especially appreciate the latter point.

But sometimes there's topics with which one's own familiarity is a roadblock for enjoyment, and Juliana Cummings' A History of Insanity was it for me. For the average reader, this may be a thorough and informative book, but to me it wasn't. It didn't tell me anything I didn't know already, and what's more, it wasn't nearly half as good as an introductory college textbook. My basic university textbooks from my first semester intro class on the history of psychology, psychiatry and psychiatric illnesses were better, and this doesn't compare. It may look unfair to compare professional textbooks with pop history books, but given that familiarity with a topic is the basis for judging the quality of a book on said topic, I can't do but.

But even without thinking of how this would stake against a book written by experts, it still has its particular deficiencies. You don't need to be familiar with psychiatry to be able to tell that the author isn't a particularly good writer, and that is putting aside the fact that she's not a professional in either history or psychiatry, which shows a lot throughout the book. The writing is choppy, stilted, overcautious, overabundant in one-liners and one-paragraph sentences, you can tell the author can't make assessments on the topic because she simply isn't trained in the topic, and she makes awkward assertions that would make you laugh for how clumsily phrased they are. For example, in the chapter that covers the T4 eugenics programme implemented by the Nazis, Cummings calls it "involuntary mass murder," a hilariously insensitive phrasing. What mass murder is "voluntary"? David Koresh's crowd, perhaps? Does she think the Jews who also were victims of the gassings alongside the disabled of Germany went to their massacres "voluntarily"? I get that the idea was to convey that the T4 programme was carried out without the knowledge or consent of the families, and that there were some (rare, it must be added) that did participate in the programme voluntarily, in the sense of consenting to have their disabled kin be killed, but that doesn't excuse the horrid phrasing and the implications. This kind of incidents is why history books by lay authors not trained in the topic they write about is suspect to me.

And it's not the only instance of awkward phrasing. The lack of formal training in history also shows in the early chapters, where some usual myths about the fall of the Roman Empire and the Middle Ages are repeated uncritically; namely, the old and debunked cliché that when Rome fell everything went dark science & progress-wise for 1,000 years until suddenly someone found the light in the Islamic world. Such an assertion is only possible from someone who has no deep knowledge of the Middle Ages and hasn't dug deeper than the oft-repeated stereotypes pop history perpetuates. This section covering medieval times is easily the worst in the book, followed by the section on ancient times, which is also rather broadly summed up.

The organisation of the ten chapters this book has is also awkward, especially in the first chapters. Each chapter is intended to cover a determined time period so the book will cover the entirety of the history of insanity from ancient times to our day in chronological order, but Cummings doesn't stick to the chapter's dedicated time period because she goes back and forth in time, so you have chapters supposedly educating you on how it was for the mentally ill in, say, the Renaissance, that go beyond the time the Renaissance lasted, and back too, and forth. It's all over the place, chaotic and unorganised, again showing the lack of training on the part of the author.

Additionally, the writing suffers from "presentism." A lot of paragraphs begin with disclaimery assertions in the vein of "Of course we now know that . . ." which read like someone is anxious to let the reader know we no longer believe or think what the Greeks or Tudor Englishmen believed. It filters the beliefs and practices of people from past times through our modern and superior knowledge of mental illness and brain processes in a patronising manner. Yes, we do know that cold water baths don't work for curing the insane. Yes, we know bloodletting doesn't cure schizophrenia. It's a given that we know all that now, you don't need to tell us that our modern psychiatrists no longer believe or do all that. And if your intent is to show that, for all the barbaric methods of curing insanity in the past, the motivation was genuine desire to help the insane with what limited knowledge and means they had in the past, and not just be a period costume version of the cruel nurse in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," then this presentism and vying to not offend modern readers' sensibilities by describing those beliefs and labels such as cretin, idiot, retarded, etc., that are now outdated and offensive but were medical terms back then doesn't help the argument.

It didn't help either that the book ended in a very abrupt way, with zero wrap up and zero global assessment of the entirety of the sad but fascinating history of mental illness on the part of the author. In fact, the last paragraph in this book merely says:

"While many state mental hospitals in Great Britain have now been closed and demolished, their history remains a remnant of the psychiatry of years past."

And that's all, folks. No smooth epilogue, no closing commentary from the author, nothing. It was so disappointing.

In sum, this may hold value for the general public that wants a quick and not too complex read, and it does have some positives, like the Victorian period chapters, but overall it's been impossible for me to overlook its issues both in content and writing.

Thank you to Pen & Sword History for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This was such an interesting read that taught me so much. It was a heavy read that was full of horrific facts but it was also such an important read, as I think it is important to know what people with mental health went through under the umbrella of caring for them and also how things have changed - or not in some cases.
A hard hitting yet important and informative read.

I received a free copy of A History of Insanity and the Asylum, by Juliana Cummings, from the publisher and Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. People with mental issues have gone through a lot in institutions, literal guinea pigs. The horror some of them went through over and over again. Asylums have always fascinated me, this is a really good book about insanity and asylums.

Have you ever wondered who thought: “maybe if I shock this person with electricity he’ll start feeling better?” In this informative volume, Juliana Cummings answers that, and many, many other questions you probably never thought you had. From the beginning of history, humans have been plagued by mental illness and some people have tried to help. The Egyptians, the Greeks, Medieval doctors, everyone has had a method to understand something so complex as the mind. Victorians are infamous for their treatment of hysteria. When you hear about mental asylums and the treatments, which were sometimes unspeakably cruel, it’s hard to believe that they were just trying to help, but Cummings has an interesting outlook on all this: the methods may have been misguided, but the intent was mostly to cure these diseases. She discusses schizophrenia, the medications that have managed to help, the architecture of the asylums, the historical outlook on the subject and even mental health today. There are some texts from the time, anecdotes and some approachable science. This is a great book for laypeople looking to learn about the issue.
I chose to read this book and all opinions in this review are my own and completely unbiased. Thank you, #NetGalley/#Pen & Sword History!

We can all learn something from Juliana Cummings' new book about the development of mental illness treatments through the ages - an interesting history lesson.

This is an excellent book that provides a comprehensive history of insanity and the asylum. Juliana Cummings does an excellent job of questioning what behaviours and characteristics define insanity, and leads us through a well-researched history of how treatments and institutional structures for caring for the mentally ill have changed over the years.

The book is well-researched and gives a thorough review of the history of insanity and asylums.
It's fascinating to learn about how mental-health treatments and institutional systems evolved and altered throughout time.

The book is filled with interesting anecdotes and examples. If you're interested in learning about psychiatry, mental illness, or just want to know more about history, then this is a book you won't want to miss.

This is a tough book to read as it does not shy away from any detail, no matter how harsh, in our society’s history of treatment of the mentally ill. Well researched and carefully sequenced, the book covers the various methods of treatment over time and includes a fascinating section on psychopharmacology. Above all, the author is respectful of the need to balance science with morals, always offering respectful consideration from the perspective of the patient. Really well written - highly recommended,

I was interested in reading this book because I have always had a morbid fascination with insane asylums. It's obvious that a lot of research went into the writing of the book. Unfortunately, it was too dry to hold my interest. I felt like I was reading a textbook for school. This was a DNF for me.

An in-depth history of the diagnosis and treatment of mentally Ill people from ancient times up until the closure of the Asylums in the NHS.

This is a difficult and somber read.

The author has meticulously researched the subject and I was very impressed with the depth to which she goes into detail.
It’s both fascinating and saddening to read that mental health has always been viewed in a harsh and cruel way, with often brutal and ridiculous ideas of how to cure people.
When you hear the word Asylum you would usually think of Bedlam, the Victorian era alongside a workhouse society, but I have to admit that while I found the entire book uncomfortable to read, I found the chapter on eugenics incredibly disturbing.

This is a very difficult subject to write about and I felt that the author has dedicated hours and hours to finding out as much as possible through research and finding the right tone for the book.

Thank you to NetGalley for the opportunity to read this book for an honest review.