The British Journal of Psychiatry (2004) 185: A18
© 2004 The Royal College of Psychiatrists
Psychiatry in pictures
EDITED BY ALLAN BEVERIDGE
Do you have an image, preferably accompanied by 100 to 200 words of
explanatory text, that you think would be suitable for Psychiatry in Pictures?
Submissions are very welcome and should be sent direct to Dr Allan Beveridge,
Queen Margaret Hospital, Whitefield Road, Dunfermline, Fife KY12 0SU, UK.
This is Plate LXXXIII of Sir Alexander Morison’s 1840 book The
Physiognomy of Mental Diseases. The picture is a sensitively drawn
portrait of a child. The text reads:
‘This boy has been idiotic since birth; his mother says that he
became more so at three years of age, after measles and whooping cough. His
head appears to be well formed; he sees, hears, smells, tastes, and feels, and
he can repeat a few words such as – mother and poor
boy; he is attentive to the calls of nature, sleeps well and seldom wets
his bed... he sometimes makes attempts to imitate others singing; he appears
to have affection for his father and mother, and is fond of looking at his
father at work as a tailor, claps his hands when he sees the needle move, and
tries to imitate the operation of sewing.’
If the picture did not appear in a textbook on mental diseases, there would
be no clue that there was anything wrong with the child. This observation
could be applied to most of the portraits in Morison’s book – the
relation between a patient’s physiognomy and the underlying mental
condition was by no means obvious. For a time, though, Morison’s book
was influential in psychiatric circles in Britain and Europe. Later in the
century, clinicians would become interested in photography and, once again,
commission portraits of individual asylum inmates.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
With thanks to Iain Milne, Head of Library and Information Services, John
Dallas, Rare Books Librarian, and staff at the Royal College of Physicians,
Edinburgh.
