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Showing episodes and shows of
Herman Charles Merivale
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My Experiences in a Lunatic Asylum
08 - My Experiences in a Lunatic Asylum by Herman Charles Merivale
In My Experiences in a Lunatic Asylum, author Herman Merivale recounts his harrowing time in an English countryside asylum during the 1860s. Dubbed a sane patient, Merivale shares his unsettling journey through a system rife with caricatures of the mentally disturbed, where both prisoners and wardens exhibit alarming behaviors. He encounters a mix of lofty psychology experts—some genuinely concerned, others woefully clueless—while nurses vacillate between withholding and over-dispensing medications. The wardens, employing brutal tactics to enforce compliance, reveal the cruelty of an era when confinement often resembled a living nightmare. Merivale poignantly illustrates the dire conditions faced by individu...
2025-08-19
06 min
My Experiences in a Lunatic Asylum
07 - My Experiences in a Lunatic Asylum by Herman Charles Merivale
In My Experiences in a Lunatic Asylum, author Herman Merivale recounts his harrowing time in an English countryside asylum during the 1860s. Dubbed a sane patient, Merivale shares his unsettling journey through a system rife with caricatures of the mentally disturbed, where both prisoners and wardens exhibit alarming behaviors. He encounters a mix of lofty psychology experts—some genuinely concerned, others woefully clueless—while nurses vacillate between withholding and over-dispensing medications. The wardens, employing brutal tactics to enforce compliance, reveal the cruelty of an era when confinement often resembled a living nightmare. Merivale poignantly illustrates the dire conditions faced by individu...
2025-08-19
27 min
My Experiences in a Lunatic Asylum
06 - My Experiences in a Lunatic Asylum by Herman Charles Merivale
In My Experiences in a Lunatic Asylum, author Herman Merivale recounts his harrowing time in an English countryside asylum during the 1860s. Dubbed a sane patient, Merivale shares his unsettling journey through a system rife with caricatures of the mentally disturbed, where both prisoners and wardens exhibit alarming behaviors. He encounters a mix of lofty psychology experts—some genuinely concerned, others woefully clueless—while nurses vacillate between withholding and over-dispensing medications. The wardens, employing brutal tactics to enforce compliance, reveal the cruelty of an era when confinement often resembled a living nightmare. Merivale poignantly illustrates the dire conditions faced by individu...
2025-08-19
31 min
My Experiences in a Lunatic Asylum
05 - My Experiences in a Lunatic Asylum by Herman Charles Merivale
In My Experiences in a Lunatic Asylum, author Herman Merivale recounts his harrowing time in an English countryside asylum during the 1860s. Dubbed a sane patient, Merivale shares his unsettling journey through a system rife with caricatures of the mentally disturbed, where both prisoners and wardens exhibit alarming behaviors. He encounters a mix of lofty psychology experts—some genuinely concerned, others woefully clueless—while nurses vacillate between withholding and over-dispensing medications. The wardens, employing brutal tactics to enforce compliance, reveal the cruelty of an era when confinement often resembled a living nightmare. Merivale poignantly illustrates the dire conditions faced by individu...
2025-08-19
26 min
My Experiences in a Lunatic Asylum
04 - My Experiences in a Lunatic Asylum by Herman Charles Merivale
In My Experiences in a Lunatic Asylum, author Herman Merivale recounts his harrowing time in an English countryside asylum during the 1860s. Dubbed a sane patient, Merivale shares his unsettling journey through a system rife with caricatures of the mentally disturbed, where both prisoners and wardens exhibit alarming behaviors. He encounters a mix of lofty psychology experts—some genuinely concerned, others woefully clueless—while nurses vacillate between withholding and over-dispensing medications. The wardens, employing brutal tactics to enforce compliance, reveal the cruelty of an era when confinement often resembled a living nightmare. Merivale poignantly illustrates the dire conditions faced by individu...
2025-08-19
26 min
My Experiences in a Lunatic Asylum
03 - My Experiences in a Lunatic Asylum by Herman Charles Merivale
In My Experiences in a Lunatic Asylum, author Herman Merivale recounts his harrowing time in an English countryside asylum during the 1860s. Dubbed a sane patient, Merivale shares his unsettling journey through a system rife with caricatures of the mentally disturbed, where both prisoners and wardens exhibit alarming behaviors. He encounters a mix of lofty psychology experts—some genuinely concerned, others woefully clueless—while nurses vacillate between withholding and over-dispensing medications. The wardens, employing brutal tactics to enforce compliance, reveal the cruelty of an era when confinement often resembled a living nightmare. Merivale poignantly illustrates the dire conditions faced by individu...
2025-08-19
23 min
My Experiences in a Lunatic Asylum
02 - My Experiences in a Lunatic Asylum by Herman Charles Merivale
In My Experiences in a Lunatic Asylum, author Herman Merivale recounts his harrowing time in an English countryside asylum during the 1860s. Dubbed a sane patient, Merivale shares his unsettling journey through a system rife with caricatures of the mentally disturbed, where both prisoners and wardens exhibit alarming behaviors. He encounters a mix of lofty psychology experts—some genuinely concerned, others woefully clueless—while nurses vacillate between withholding and over-dispensing medications. The wardens, employing brutal tactics to enforce compliance, reveal the cruelty of an era when confinement often resembled a living nightmare. Merivale poignantly illustrates the dire conditions faced by individu...
2025-08-19
22 min
My Experiences in a Lunatic Asylum
01 - My Experiences in a Lunatic Asylum by Herman Charles Merivale
In My Experiences in a Lunatic Asylum, author Herman Merivale recounts his harrowing time in an English countryside asylum during the 1860s. Dubbed a sane patient, Merivale shares his unsettling journey through a system rife with caricatures of the mentally disturbed, where both prisoners and wardens exhibit alarming behaviors. He encounters a mix of lofty psychology experts—some genuinely concerned, others woefully clueless—while nurses vacillate between withholding and over-dispensing medications. The wardens, employing brutal tactics to enforce compliance, reveal the cruelty of an era when confinement often resembled a living nightmare. Merivale poignantly illustrates the dire conditions faced by individu...
2025-08-19
19 min
History of Psychiatry Podcast Series
18. Being an asylum patient 4: Christian Watt at Aberdeen Royal Mental Asylum, 1877
As I showed last week, Herman Charles Merivale’s time at Ticehurst was a bit like being in a nice hotel, though he did not like the other ‘guests’. Someone who seems to have settled rather better into an institutional environment was a working class Aberdeenshire woman, who also wrote a retrospective account of her time in a public asylum. She wrote with frankness and sensitivity, about both herself and her fellow patients, making the best of her prolonged stay, which lasted 45 years. However, it is also clear that she re-wrote much of what happened, including the frightening circumstances of delusi...
2017-11-10
09 min
History of Psychiatry Podcast Series
Extract 17.1 - Herman Charles Merivale
This extract accompanies Podcast 17 - Being an asylum patient 3b: Herman Charles Merivale at Ticehurst, 1875IMAGE: Wellcome Library, London. Ticehurst Case Records, 1875-9, pp. 15-16. Credit: Wellcome Library, London, Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial licenseVoice Credit: Jem Tatar
2017-11-07
01 min
History of Psychiatry Podcast Series
17. Being an asylum patient 3b: Herman Charles Merivale at Ticehurst, 1875
Last week’s extract and podcast allowed us to see what others thought of the lawyer Herman Charles Merivale, when he was committed to a private asylum. The document from which it came exists in abundance for 19th century asylums. Insight into how patients saw the experience of incarceration are much rarer, though I shall give examples this week and next. Merivale is unusual because he wrote his own account of entering and living in an up-market private madhouse. Public asylums were crowded with paupers. Understaffed and with only basic facilities, they were probably difficult environments for most patients. Merivale’s ex...
2017-11-07
09 min
History of Psychiatry Podcast Series
Extract 16.1 - Herman Merivale
This extract accompanies Podcast 16 - Being an asylum patient 3a: Herman Charles Merivale admitted to Ticehurst, 1875 IMAGE: Wellcome Library, London. Ticehurst Case Records, 1875-9, pp. 15-16. Credit: Wellcome Library, London, Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial licenseSPOKEN VERSION: Jem Tatar
2017-10-30
02 min
History of Psychiatry Podcast Series
16. Being an asylum patient 3a: Herman Charles Merivale admitted to Ticehurst, 1875
The most abundant sources for understanding the history of psychiatry are medical case notes, kept by asylum staff. In addition, petitions for admission gave accounts of behaviour that precipitated the committal of a person to an institution. In this case he was a well-off London lawyer and the asylum was an up-market private one in the Home Counties of England. In drawing up the certification necessary for compulsory committal, the medical men relied much more on accounts given by servants and family, than they did on the rather uncommunicative object of their consultation.IMAGE: Wellcome Library, London. Ticehurst Case Records, 1875...
2017-10-30
12 min