Abstract

Sir James Crichton-Browne (1840–1938) held a uniquely distinguished position in the British psychiatry of his time. Unburdened by false modesty, he called himself ‘the doyen of British medical psychology’ and, in the narrow sense, he was indeed its most senior practitioner. At the time of his death, he could reflect on almost half a century's service as Lord Chancellor's Visitor and a similar span as a Fellow of the Royal Society.

Highlights

  • Today, if he is remembered at all, it is as an early proponent of evolutionary concepts of mental disorder (Crow, 1995). Summarising his decade of research at the West Riding Asylum in the 1870s, Crichton-Browne proposed that in the insane the weight of the brain was reduced, the lateral ventricles were enlarged and the burden of damage fell on the left cerebral hemisphere in the temporal lobe

  • Sir James spent much of his childhood in a mental hospital ^ the Crichton Royal at Dumfries ^ where his father, W.A.F

  • In 1825, Andrew Combe advanced phrenological ideas in debate at the Royal Medical Society and the furore which followed resulted in the Society issuing writs prohibiting the phrenologists from publishing the proceedings

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Summary

Introduction

Summarising his decade of research at the West Riding Asylum in the 1870s, Crichton-Browne proposed that in the insane the weight of the brain was reduced, the lateral ventricles were enlarged and the burden of damage fell on the left cerebral hemisphere in the temporal lobe. Sir James spent much of his childhood in a mental hospital ^ the Crichton Royal at Dumfries ^ where his father, W.A.F. Browne (1805^1885), was medical superintendent. Sir James does not dwell, on his father’s association with George and Andrew Combe, the brothers at the centre of British phrenology in Edinburgh in the 1820s.

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