This Thesis Has Been Submitted in Fulfilment of the Requirements for a Postgraduate Degree (E.G

This thesis has been submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for a postgraduate degree (e.g. PhD, MPhil, DClinPsychol) at the University of Edinburgh. Please note the following terms and conditions of use: • This work is protected by copyright and other intellectual property rights, which are retained by the thesis author, unless otherwise stated. • A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge. • This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the author. • The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the author. • When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given. The Natural Guardians of the Race: Heredity, Hygiene, Alcohol, and Degeneration in Scottish Psychiatry, c. 1860 – 1920 James Wood Ph.D. The University of Edinburgh 2011 i Declaration I hereby declare that this thesis is entirely my own work and has not been submitted in part or whole for any other degree or professional qualification. ii Acknowledgements “In considering the significance of this strangely neglected topic. This what neglected topic? This strangely what topic? This strangely neglected what?” [ Lucky Jim ] Thanks mum, I’ll never forget it This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council iii Abstract This thesis investigates the ways in which hereditary degeneration was discussed by Scottish psychiatrists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries with particular reference to the anti-alcohol debate. I examine the theoretical writings of both clinical and forensic psychiatry to show how the theory of degeneration functioned as part of a new understanding of legal medicine and that psychiatric knowledge was always implicitly related to a broader conception of criminal capacity and the role of the modern state. While the argument is situated in the wider literature covering psychiatry and degeneration in Europe and America during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, I trace a rather singular story rooted in the institutional peculiarities of Scotland, showing how psychiatrists attempted to use the problem of alcoholic degeneration to mould their science into a branch of public health, propelling them into their preferred role as guardians of the race. This public health campaign facilitated the creation of new categories of psychiatric knowledge consisting of mental abnormalities that did not amount to absolute insanity, but that none the less had a bearing on how people thought about the mind, conduct, and criminal capacity. All the leading figures of Scottish psychiatry had a significant interest in alcohol as a cause of degeneration, and in their descriptions of the condition, the legal applications of the doctrine were never from view. One reason for this was undoubtedly the autonomous nature of the Scottish legal system which, when combined with the relatively small professional population of Scotland, greatly increased the rate of intellectual exchange between psychiatrists and lawyers while intensifying the political implications of associating with certain doctrines. Thus, a large part of my thesis will also be devoted to the legal interpretation of psychiatric claims, and in later part of the thesis I examine in depth the extent to which psychiatric knowledge claims were able to modify the laws of Scotland. Three substantive themes protrude from the documents consulted: Heredity, degeneration and alcohol, and medico-legal interaction. In analysing these themes, I engage with specific aspects of the social and institutional life of Scottish psychiatrists in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. iv Table of Contents 1. Introduction ……………………………………………………………1 1.2 Sources ……………………………………………………………… 9 1.3 ‘Scottish’ Psychiatry…………………………………………………14 2. Literature Review 2.1 The Rise of Social Pathology………………………………………...20 2.2 Psychiatry without Symptoms………………………………………..28 2.3 The Political Dimensions of Heredity………………………………..37 2.4 Forensic Psychiatry…………………………………………………...42 3. A Double Tide of Barbarians: Heredity and Degeneration in French Psychiatry 3.1 Introduction……………………………………………………………45 3.2 Alcohol, Heredity, and Degeneration in Morel’s First Treatise………48 3.3 Valentin Magnan: The St. Paul of Degeneration Theory……………..62 3.4 Conclusion…………………………………………………………….74 4. From Peculiar Insanity to Insane Peculiarity 4.1 Pathological Consolidation…………………………………………….76 4.2 The Rusting Lancet: From Disease to Constitution……………………78 4.3 Pathological Continuity………………………………………………...85 5. Priests of the Body: Thomas Clouston and Degeneration 5.1 Introduction…………………………………………………………….91 5.2 Manias: Old and New…………………………………………………..97 5.3 Manias: Interesting and Banal…………………..……………………..104 5.4 The Neuroses of Development…………………………………………123 5.5 The Small Thumbed Patient and the Potential Killer………………….134 5.6 From Psychiatry without Symptoms to Psychiatry without Sentiment…………………………………………………………………...142 5.7 Conclusion……………………………………………………………...152 6. Psychiatry and the Scottish Courts: Alcohol, Partial Responsibility, and Experts in Insanity 6.1 Introduction…………………………………………………………….154 6.2 Tonight: The Robbers! Murder and Expertise Prior to Culpable Homicide........................................................................................................157 v 6.3 Diminished Responsibility and Expert Evidence: The Trial of Dingwall…………………………………………………………………...163 6.4 Monomania, Degeneration, and Culpable Homicide……………….....169 6.5 The Development of Diminished Responsibility ……………………..177 6.6 Conclusion …………………………………………………………….188 7. From Moral Insanity to Insane Morality 7.1 Introduction……………………………………………………………195 7.2 Vengeance amongst Rabid Dogs: Anti-Codification and Vituperation in Scottish Legal History………………………………………………………………199 7.3 History’s Greatest Illusion: Free Will, Degeneration, and Legal Reform……………………………………………………………………..208 7.4 Against Ancient Doctrines: The Search for Stable Stigmata………….220 8. Conclusion………………………………………………………………233 Bibliography………………………………………………………………..240 vi 1 Introduction In 1866 the members of the British Asylum Officers’ Association made a statement of scientific intent by changing the title of their professional organisation to the Medico- Psychological Association [MPA]. At the inaugural meeting of this new organisation the president-elect, Scottish asylum-doctor W. A. F. Browne noted to those assembled that the change of title reflected both a broadening of the association’s intellectual interests and recognition of the increasingly public role psychiatrists would play in “anticipating, preventing and modifying mental maladies.” This new public health campaign would be conducted under the aegis of “the laws of hérédité , moral and intellectual degeneration, and of intermarriage” which were said to “constitute a science in themselves; and, perhaps, contain the basis of the future development and utility of prophylactic medicine.” 1 Browne’s address succinctly captured the sequence of sub-discourses which combined to form the theory of degeneration in the second half of the nineteenth century, offering a series of guarantees to the public that the promotion of psychiatry was intrinsic to the national interest: 1. Prophylaxis and public hygiene – the political guarantee that psychiatrists would operate as an essential element in the constitution of nineteenth-century states. 2. The laws of heredity – the a priori guarantee of the discipline’s truth as a medical speciality from which its statements would flow as credible ones. 1 W. A. F. Browne, ‘Address: on medico-psychology’, Journal of Mental Science, xii, 1866, pp.309- 327. The term ‘psychiatry’ [Ger. Psychiatrie ] was imported into the English language as early as 1846, with reference to ‘psychiatrists’ from the 1890s. Even so, neither term was in popular English usage before the 1930s; indeed, it was not until 1971 that the British Medico-Psychological Association became known as the College of Psychiatrists. During the nineteenth century, specialists in mental disease were more typically known as ‘alienists’ or ‘medical officers of asylums’. While there is an acknowledged anachronism in continuing to refer to nineteenth-century mental scientists as ‘psychiatrists’, I will generally employ this practice throughout. There are two good justifications for this: First, both terms are in common use amongst historians of psychiatry and serve as convenient and recognisable labels; second, and more significantly, the various groups of actors I cover in this thesis did not pursue a rigorous and precisely defined programme of research, hence, in labelling their discourse as ‘psychiatric’, I am able to capture the fluidity of professional boundaries that was so characteristic of their approach. That is to say, the term ‘psychiatrist’ functions as an ‘analyst’s category’ rather than an ‘actor’s category’. When it is necessary to draw more precise distinctions, I will specify the institutional roles played by various actors. On the history of the term psychiatry in the English language, see J L Crammer, ‘Training and Education in British Psychiatry, 1770 – 1970’, in G. E. Berrios and H. Freeman, 150 Years of Psychiatry: The Aftermath, Volume II , London: Athlone Press, 1996, p.209 1 3. Moral and intellectual degeneration – the guarantee

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