Rawling, KDB orcid.org/0000-0002-8608-0931 (2021) ‘The Annexed Photos were Taken Today’: Photographing Patients in the Late-Nineteenth-century Asylum. Social History of Medicine, 34 (1). pp. 256-284. ISSN 0951-631X
Abstract
Photographing patients was a common practice in many asylums in the nineteenth century. Asylum casebooks contain thousands of patient photographs varying in style and content, but they have been paid relatively little attention by historians of medicine. When patient photographs have been considered, one type of photograph has been taken to represent all patient photography. Through a comparison of casebook photographs from two very different institutions, this article argues that photographic practices were fluid, ambiguous and diverse in the nineteenth century, and the camera was used in a variety of ways inside the asylum. Examining the visual patient record can enhance and even challenge established histories of mental illness and medico-psychiatric practices, as we consider the photographing of patients as a stage in the doctor–patient encounter, an important part of diagnosis and resulting treatment, and as a feature of patient experience.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s) 2019. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for the Social History of Medicine. This is an author produced version of an article published in Social History of Medicine. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. |
Keywords: | photography, asylum, psychiatry, nineteenth century, patients |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Cultures (Leeds) > School of Philosophy, Religion and History of Science (Leeds) > School of Philosophy (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 01 Jul 2021 13:16 |
Last Modified: | 02 Jul 2021 00:38 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Oxford University Press (OUP) |
Identification Number: | 10.1093/shm/hkz060 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:175710 |