John Batty Tuke
John Batty Tuke | |
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Trinity College, Dublin, Knighthood | |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Neuroscience |
Sir John Batty Tuke PRCPE
Biography
Batty Tuke (as he is most often referenced) was born in
In 1845 Tuke was sent to Edinburgh where he began attending Edinburgh Academy as a boarder. He completed his education there with honours in history and reading in 1851.[7] Tuke then studied medicine at the Edinburgh University Medical School where he graduated in 1856 with the thesis "On idiocy" [8] and was registered at the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh.[9] Shortly after qualifying, Tuke went to New Zealand as a medical surgeon for seven years in the New Zealand Wars.[5]
Upon his return to Edinburgh in 1863 Tuke was appointed to the Royal Edinburgh Asylum (later renamed the Royal Edinburgh Hospital) as an assistant physician.[5] Under the tutelage of the then superintendent David Skae Tuke quickly developed a niche in puerperal insanity and published influential articles on the subject.[10]
In 1865 Tuke's reputation was confirmed with an appointment to the newly built Fife & Kinross District Asylum (now Stratheden Hospital) as superintendent.[5] There he had the ability to hire and train his entire staff and set out an "open-doors" model of care for his patients which gained him further accolades from his peers.[11] While Tuke was working in this influential position, his publications began especially to promote his ideas for the advancement of humane patient treatment.[12] In 1871 Dr John Fraser joined the Fife Asylum as his assistant. He later married his daughter (see below).[13]
As his career progressed Tuke also occupied positions of leadership within the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh and wrote an influential article on the "cottage system" of care for insane people where he criticised the traditional Scottish practices of caring for "incurable" insane people by boarding them out with often destitute members of the community in exchange for meager compensation.[14] In 1873 Tuke returned to Edinburgh to take a joint management position with Dr Smith and Dr Lowe at the private Saughton Hall Asylum.[15] This move marked a change from public to private care and Tuke also set up a practice in Charlotte Square as a "specialist in mental diseases".[5] That year, he was appointed to be Morison Lecturer at the RCPE for 1874,[16] and began teaching at the University of Edinburgh.[17] In 1874 he was elected a member of the Harveian Society of Edinburgh.[18][19] Another notable achievement during this time was his contribution to the ninth edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. Considered to be the most 'scholarly' edition produced by this publisher Tuke wrote the entries on hysteria and insanity.[20] Tuke also contributed to a series of "Health Lectures for the People" delivered in Edinburgh during the winter of 1881–2. His lectures on "The Brain and its Functions" debunked the science of phrenology and used visual demonstrations to teach the public about the brain.[21]
In 1894 Tuke was again appointed to the Morison Lectureship at the RCPE and chose "The Insanity of Over-exertion of the Brain" as his topic. This series would be the culmination of Tuke's theory of physical disease as the cause of mental illness.[22] Tuke proposed that both the public and profession had been hampered by Hippocratic classifications of insanity that were entirely psychological and led to an ignorance of brain anatomy, physiology and pathology, and a focus on behavioural symptoms. He condemned the popular notion the public needed protection from lunatics as well as the idea that insanity was manifested through perversion of the intellect. According to Tuke these elements had combined to create communities and medical terminology that regarded insanity as "a disease of the mind".
Tuke directly avoided the task of trying to explain "the dynamics of delusion" and focused on his theory of cell overexertion by injury, parasitism, deficient cell functioning or defective cell growth.[23] By focusing on cell functioning and cure through rest and nutrition, Tuke rejected attributions of moral infirmity or deficiency in the insane. Tuke saw these ideas as slowing the progress of treatment and scientific understanding since they "construct a psychological nexus between cause and symptom without demonstration of structural change in cortical tissues". Tuke heralded the study of mental illness through brain anatomy as the way to "a rational system of treatment”and enjoined his colleagues to consider their patients "first as invalids and as an insane person after".
Aside from the immediate exposure of the lecture hall Tuke's talks were published in London and Edinburgh as well as in the Journal of Mental Science.
In 1895 Tuke became president of the RCPE. In 1898 he was knighted
Tuke lived at 20 Charlotte Square a very fine and large Georgian townhouse in Edinburgh's First New Town.[30] Tuke died in Edinburgh on 13 October 1913.[31] His death was reported in several prominent medical journals and in The Scotsman newspaper.
He is buried in Warriston Cemetery in Edinburgh, on the north side of the central roundel, south of the central vaults.
Tuke received an
Family
In 1856 he married Lydia Jane Magee.
His sister Catherine Tuke (d.1863) married
His daughter Catherine Tuke married
References
- ^ Nathalie Chernoff, "Sir John Batty Tuke and his influence on ideas about mental illness in late nineteenth century Edinburgh." Conference Presentation (Edinburgh: BPS History and Theory of Psychology Section Conference, 2009).http://www.bps.org.uk/downloadfile.cfm?file_uuid=AE1C854F-1143-DFD0-7E54-AB4D2A0A1717&ext=pdf
- ^ "An admirable candidate" The Scotsman, 19 April 1900, p4.
- ISBN 0-900178-27-2.
- ^ Lorraine Walsh, “'The Property of the Whole Community', Charity and Insanity in Urban Scotland: The Dundee Royal Lunatic Asylum", in Insanity, Institutions and Society, 1800–1914, ed. Joseph Melling and Bill Forsythe (London: Routledge, 1999), 180.
- ^ a b c d e "Obituary: Sir John Batty Tuke", The British Medical Journal (13 October 1913):1045.
- ^ "Obituary: Sir John Batty Tuke", The British Medical Journal (13 October 1913):1045.; "Saturday’s bulletin", The Scotman, 23 April 1900, p6.
- ^ "Graduation Records of the Edinburgh Royal Academy" (Edinburgh: Edinburgh Royal Academy, 1851)
- ^ Tuke, John Batty (1856). "On idiocy".
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(help) - ^ "Sir John Batty Tuke" in Registry of Faculty Alumni: Trail-Volume (Edinburgh Library Special Collections); "Licentiateship of Duncan Sinclair & John Batty Tuke" Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh Register (Edinburgh: RCSE Private Library, 1856).
- ^ John Batty Tuke, "Cases illustrative of the insanity of pregnancy, puerperal mania, and insanity of lactation" The Edinburgh Medical Journal, 12 (1866):1083.
- ^ National Health Service (NHS): Fife, "Records of Stratheden Hospital"; G. A. Doody, A. Beveridge, E. C. Johnstone, "Poor and Mad: A Study of Patients Admitted to the Fife and Kinross District Asylum Between 1874 and 1899" Psychological Medicine, 26:5(1996): 887–898.
- ^ John Batty Tuke, "Cases illustrative of the insanity of pregnancy, puerperal mania, and insanity of lactation" The Edinburgh Medical Journal, 12 (1866):1083; John Batty Tuke, "On a new lesion observed in the brain" Edinburgh Medical Journal, September (1868): 204; John Batty Tuke, Morbid appearances met with in the brain of thirty insane persons. (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1869); John Batty Tuke, "The Cottage System of Management of Lunatics as Practiced in Scotland, with Suggestions for it Elaboration and Improvement", The Journal of Mental Science, 15 (1870): 531–532.
- ^ "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2 February 2017. Retrieved 29 July 2020.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link) - ^ John Batty Tuke, "The Cottage System of Management of Lunatics as Practiced in Scotland, with Suggestions for it Elaboration and Improvement," The Journal of Mental Science, 15 (1870): 531–532.
- ^ Joseph Jackson Howard and Frederick Arthur Crisp, Visitation of Ireland, (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing, 1973), 30.
- ^ "Morisonian Lectures on Insanity", The Scotsman, 26 March 1874, p4.
- ^ "Edinburgh School of Medicine" The Scotsman, 4 November 1873, 3.
- ^ Watson Wemyss, Herbert Lindesay (1933). A Record of the Edinburgh Harveian Society. T&A Constable, Edinburgh.
- ^ Minute Books of the Harveian Society. Library of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.
- ^ John Batty Tuke, "Hysteria" The Encyclopædia Britannica (London: Encyclopædia Britannica, 1875); John Batty Tuke, "Insanity" The Encyclopædia Britannica (London: Encyclopædia Britannica, 1875) & "Obituary: Sir John Batty Tuke", The British Medical Journal (13 October 1913):1045.
- ^ John Batty Tuke, "The Brain and its Functions" in Health Lectures for the People: Second Series (Edinburgh: Macniven & Wallace, 1882), 83 & 96.
- ^ John Batty Tuke, The Insanity of Over-exertion of the Brain, (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1894).
- ^ John Batty Tuke, The Insanity of Over-exertion of the Brain, (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1894) p17.
- ^ John Batty Tuke, The Insanity of Over-exertion of the Brain. (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1894)l; John Batty Tuke, The Insanity of Over-exertion of the Brain. (London: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent and Co., Ltd, 1894) & John Batty Tuke, "The Insanity of Over-exertion of the Brain", Journal of Mental Science, 41(1895): 331–335.
- ^ "Honours to Edinburgh Scientists" The Scotsman, 20 June 1896, 9.
- ^ "Sir John Batty Tuke," The Royal Society of Edinburgh Medical Fellows Elected 1841–1882, Volume 4 ,(Edinburgh: Scotland’s Cultural Heritage, 1983).
- ^ Sir John Batty Tuke, "Modern Conceptions of the Etiology of the Insanities", British Medical Journal, (6 August 1898): 341–345.
- ^ "Sir J.B. Tuke a member of parliament," The New York Times (4 May 1900).; "Obituary: Sir John Batty Tuke", The British Medical Journal (13 October 1913):1045.
- ^ Minute Books of the Aesculapian Club. Library of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.
- ^ Edinburgh and Leith Post Office Directory 1889–1890
- ^ ”Obituary: Sir John Batty Tuke", The British Medical Journal (13 October 1913):1045.
- ^ "University intelligence". The Times. No. 36711. London. 10 March 1902. p. 11.
- ^ Grave of Dr John Smith, Dean Cemetery
- ISBN 0-902-198-84-X. Archived from the original(PDF) on 24 January 2013. Retrieved 19 May 2016.
External links
- Works by or about John Batty Tuke at Wikisource
- Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by John Batty Tuke
- General paralysis of the insane – a thesis submitted to the University of Edinburgh by John Batty Tuke in 1890.