MA History – Medical Pathway (360G-Wellcome-203895_Z_16_Z)

Life in Glamorgan County Lunatic Asylum 1864–1914. Research Problem: To investigate the interaction between the perspectives, practices and responses of professional staff and incarcerated patients within the Glamorgan asylum, in order both to recover the silent voice and lived experience of patients and to reveal the implementation of professional medical theories within the daily life of the asylum itself. Key Goals: To use the archival records of an individual asylum (Glamorgan County Lunatic Asylum) to ask wider questions and challenge traditional generalised narratives of asylum history. To exploit the archival asylum records in new and dynamic ways in order to recover the ‘patient voice’ and understand patients as active agents in their asylum patient experience. To consider interactions between professional staff and patients in the interpretation of the relationship between the body and the mind within the asylum To investigate how physical ‘symptoms’ were used to demonstrate mental illness, and the use of photography in casebooks to consider the idea that madness had a ’face’