Author Description

Yorkshireman Henry Maudsley (1835-1918) studied and built his medical career in London. From 1860 he specialised in psychiatry, working at hospitals and in private practice, and from 1863 to 1878 he was joint editor of the Journal of Mental Science. As a leading 'alienist', he treated high-profile patients and became sufficiently wealthy to contribute £30,000 in 1907 towards the foundation of a specialist psychiatric hospital. In his many publications, he developed ideas of heredity derived from Darwin and argued strongly for the physical basis of mental illness. This ambitious 1867 book was very well received; by 1883 two further expanded English editions had appeared, as well as German and French translations. In his preface, Maudsley emphasises the importance of considering 'the phenomena of the sound and unsound mind' in a single scientific discipline rather than studying them from only one of the perspectives of metaphysics, physiology or pathology.