William A. F. Browne
Dr William Alexander Francis Browne (1805–1885) was one of the most significant British asylum doctors of the nineteenth century. At Montrose Asylum (1834–1838) in Angus and at the Crichton Royal in Dumfries (1838–1857), Browne introduced activities for patients including writing, group activity and drama, pioneered early forms of occupational therapy and art therapy, and initiated one of the earliest collections of artistic work by patients in a psychiatric hospital.[1] In an age which rewarded self-control, Browne encouraged self-expression and may therefore be counted alongside William Tuke, Vincenzo Chiarugi and John Conolly as one of the pioneers of the moral treatment of mental illness. Sociologist Andrew Scull[2] has identified Browne's career with the institutional climax of nineteenth century psychiatry.
"Browne was one of the reformers of the asylum care of the insane whose improvements and innovations were chronicled in his annual reports from The Crichton Royal Institution, but who in addition published almost on the threshold of his career a sort of manifesto of what he wished to see accomplished...." Richard Hunter and Ida Macalpine (1963) Three Hundred Years of Psychiatry 1535–1860, page 865.
In 1857, Browne was appointed Commissioner in Lunacy for Scotland and, in 1866, he was elected President of the Medico-Psychological Association, now the Royal College of Psychiatrists. He was the father of the eminent psychiatrist James Crichton-Browne.
Early life
Browne was the son of an army officer – Lieutenant William Browne of the
Student atheism and radicalism
"Mr Browne then read his paper on organization as connected with Life and Mind in which he endeavoured to establish the following propositions: 1. That all matter is organised. 2. That it is the gradually increased perfection in the arrangement of the parts constituting organization, which is the ?cause /?source of the distinctions perceptible in the various objects of nature, and not specific differences. 3. That life is the abstract of the qualities inherent in these modes of arranging matter. 4. That mind is to be distinguished from life, being neither one of the functions or combination of qualities, by the concatenation of which life is constituted – nor a term indicating a similar idea. And 5. That mind as far as one individual sense, and consciousness are concerned, is material." The Deleted Minutes, The Plinian Society, Edinburgh, 27 March 1827. Suppressed, probably by Robert Jameson, Regius Professor of Natural History. First quoted by Paul H. Barrett (1974, 1980) (in) Metaphysics, Materialism and the Evolution of Mind – early writings of Charles Darwin London and Chicago: University of Chicago Press, page 219.
"Browne, the fiery radical, gave such an inflammatory harangue on matter and mind that it sparked a raging debate. He provoked the students by arguing that mind and consciousness are not spiritual entities, separate from the body; they are simple spin-offs from brain activity. Such a notion raised dreadful questions...." Adrian Desmond and James Moore (1991) Darwin.
As a medical student, Browne was a
Browne presented Plinian papers on various subjects, including plants he had collected, the habits of the
expression is to the passions as language is to thought.
— [citation needed]
Browne argued that these anatomical differences were lacking and that such essential differences between human beings and animals did not exist. Forty-five years later, Darwin pursued an identical argument in his The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872), confiding in Alfred Russel Wallace that one of his main purposes was to discredit the slippery rhetoric of Sir Charles Bell.[3]
Later, at a Plinian meeting on 27 March 1827, Browne followed Darwin's paper on
"troubled with doubts arising from certain Materialist views which are, alas, all too common among medical students."[7][8]
After graduating at Edinburgh, Browne travelled to Paris and studied
"One is tempted to believe phrenologists are right about habitual exercise of the mind altering form of [the] head, & thus these qualities become hereditary...." Charles Darwin (1838) The M Notebook .
"I have been making immense use almost every day of your manuscript – the book ought to be called by Darwin and Browne ?" Charles Darwin to James Crichton Browne, concerning the composition of The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872).
Early psychiatric career
Browne became a physician at
"Conceive of a spacious building resembling the palace of a peer, airy, and elevated, and elegant, surrounded by extensive and swelling grounds and gardens. The interior is fitted up with galleries, and workshops, and music-rooms. The sun and air are allowed to enter at every window, the view of the shrubberies and fields, and groups of labourers, is unobstructed by shutters or bars; all is clean, quiet and attractive. The inmates all seem to be motivated by the common impulse of enjoyment, all are busy, and delighted by being so. The house and all around appears a hive of industry"....
— W.A.F.Browne (1837) What Asylums Were, Are and Ought To Be.
In this enormously influential book, Browne agreed with the contemporary perception that insanity was associated with the social upheavals consequent upon the
as we recede, step by step, from the simple... manners of our ancestors, and advance in industry and knowledge and happiness, this malignant persecutor strides onward, signalizing every era... by an increase, a new hecatomb, of victims.
In some ways, Browne anticipated the French psychiatrist Bénédict Morel whose clinical theories of degeneration were published in his 1857 masterpiece Treatise on Degeneration. Browne – rather surprisingly – supported the idea that insanity was most prevalent amongst the highest rank of society and he concluded that "the agricultural population..... is to a great degree exempt from insanity". He speculated that insanity was common in America because
the refuse of other nations has been poured forth. ... the tide of population, which has been flowing for so many years uninterruptedly towards America, has been impure and poisoned.[12]
He also suggested that the higher incidence of mental illness amongst women was the result of inequalities and poorer education.[9] On the basis of his studies of inmates of his hospital, he asserted that those canonised in the past as saints for their hyperactive organ of veneration would now be categorised as insane.[4]
Crichton Royal: Moral Treatment and Therapeutic Approaches
"....Browne persisted, even insisting on the first lighting of the Montrose asylum with gas in 1836, an event which prompted the assembly of a crowd at the gate to witness and perhaps to enjoy the conflagration which was expected inevitably to follow.... The asylum did not burn down. On the contrary, it flourished in Browne's hands as never before...."
— Andrew Scull (1991) The Asylum as Utopia: W.A.F. Browne and the Mid-Nineteenth Century Consolidation of Psychiatry London and New York: Tavistock/Routledge, page xiv.
"Dr Browne's Annual Reports form the only Reports of the Institution during his period of office. They are printed by the Dumfries Herald, except for the 13th Report (for 1852) printed by the Crichton Press.... The first patient is admitted on 4 June 1839 – a female pauper from the North Block of the old Dumfries and Galloway Royal Infirmary....it is of interest to note that this patient recovers five years later, in May 1844...."
— Charles Cromhall Easterbrook (1940) The Chronicle of Crichton Royal (1833–1936), page 21.
"Where there is a work of art, there is no madness."
— Michel Foucault Madness and Civilization, quoted by Dr Maureen Park (2010) (in) Art in Madness: Dr W.A.F. Browne's Collection of Patient Art at Crichton Royal Institution, Dumfries, page xv.
"Moved by early predilection – my father, a phrenologist of the old school, was assistant to George Combe at his lectures for a time, and was also for some years one of the Henderson trustees – I have dipped into that old controversy and....this I will say, that from our point of view today, the phrenologists, notwithstanding their egregious errors, had the best of it both in argument and temper."
— James Crichton-Browne The Story of the Brain Lecture delivered in Edinburgh, Friday 29 February 1924.
Browne was a passionate advocate of the moral treatment of the insane and he hated any suggestion of prejudice against the mentally ill.
"There is in this community no compulsion, no chains, no corporal chastisement, simply because these are proved to be less effectual means of carrying any point than persuasion, emulation, and the desire of earning gratification... such is a faithful picture of what may be seen in many institutions, and of what might be seen in all, were asylums conducted as they ought to be."
— William A.F. Browne (1837) What Asylums Were, Are, and Ought To Be.
In 1838 the wealthy philanthropist
In 1870, while visiting asylums in East Lothian, Browne was involved in a road accident which resulted in his resignation as Commissioner in Lunacy, and, later, in increasing problems with his eyesight. He may have been suffering some ophthalmic problems, probably glaucoma, from years earlier. Browne retired to his home in Dumfries and worked on a series of medico-literary projects, including the Religio Psycho-Medici (1877) in which he re-explored the territories of psychopathology and the spiritual outlook.
Towards the end of his career, Browne returned to the relationships of language, psychosis and brain injury in his 1872 paper Impairment of Language, the Result of Cerebral Disease published in the West Riding Lunatic Asylum Medical Reports, edited by his son James Crichton-Browne. At this time, Crichton-Browne was concluding a lengthy correspondence with Charles Darwin during the preparation and publication of The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals.
In 1839, Browne had initiated one of the first collections of art by mental patients in institutions, gathering a large amount of work which he had bound into three volumes, in many ways a forerunner to
W.A.F. Browne's legacy
Universally regarded as a superb asylum superintendent and as a distinguished President of the
Browne is now considered as an important influence – along with Robert Grant – on the youthful Charles Darwin as a medical student in Edinburgh in 1826/1827. In December 1826, Browne delivered an inflammatory harangue to the Plinian Society concerning emotional expression – contesting the doctrines of Charles Bell. On 27 March 1827, Browne spelled out the full implications of a materialistic theory of the mind at the Plinian Society – and the 18-year-old Charles Darwin was there to hear on both occasions. In this way, Browne was a pivotal figure in the mutual engagement of psychiatry and evolutionary theory. Browne's son, James Crichton Browne, greatly extended his work in psychiatry and medical psychology. In his correspondence with Crichton-Browne, Charles Darwin suggested – during the preparation of The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872) – that it should be regarded as authored "by Darwin and Browne ? ".
Notes
- ^ a b "British Outsider Art Exhibitions, John Joseph Sheehy London and Group Show in Paris 2008". Retrieved 15 January 2009.
- ^ Scull, Andrew (1991) The Asylum as Utopia: W.A.F. Browne and the Mid-Nineteenth Century Consolidation of Psychiatry London: Tavistock/Routledge
- ^ a b Desmond & Moore 1991, pp. 31–33
- ^ a b c Desmond 1989, pp. 67–68
- ^ Browne 1995, pp. 73–75
- .
- ^ a b Browne 1995, p. 87
- ^ Desmond & Moore 1991, pp. 38–41
- ^ ISBN 0-471-67961-5.
- ^ "Darwin Correspondence Project – Browne, W. A. F." Retrieved 19 January 2009.
- ^ "THB 23/18/1 'What Asylums Were, Are and Ought to Be'". Archive Services Online Catalogue. University of Dundee. Retrieved 13 October 2014.
- ISBN 0-8135-3003-2.
- . Retrieved 9 February 2009.
- required.)
- ^ 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.
- ^ Park, Maureen (2010) Art in Madness: Dr W A F Browne's Collection of Patient Art at Crichton Royal Institution, Dumfries Dumfries and Galloway Health Board.
References
- ISBN 1-84413-314-1.
- ISBN 0-226-14374-0.
- Desmond, Adrian; ISBN 0-7181-3430-3.