James Crichton-Browne Research Articles

The West Riding Lunatic Asylum Medical Reports: the precursor of Brain?

First published in 1878, Brain: A Journal of Neurology is generally considered to be the world's first neuroscientific journal. However, this claim might be challenged since the West Riding Lunatic Asylum Medical Reports, another journal with significant neuroscientific content, was published between 1871 and 1876. Some have suggested this journal was the precursor of Brain, since it shared similar subject matter as well as editorial and authorial contributors, including James Crichton-Browne, David Ferrier and John Hughlings Jackson. To address this question, this article examines the origins, aims, structure and contents of, and some of the contributors and contributions to, the West Riding Lunatic Asylum Medical Reports and compares these elements to the first six volumes of Brain (1878-9 to 1883-4). Although the two journals did overlap in terms of some shared neuroscientific interests, Brain evidently had a broader scope and a more international authorship. Nevertheless, this analysis suggests that, through the agency of Crichton-Browne, Ferrier and Hughlings Jackson, it is appropriate to regard the West Riding Lunatic Asylum Medical Reports as not only the antecedent but also the precursor of Brain.

« J’ai pensé qu’il fallait étudier les aliénés » : l’œuvre de Charles Darwin et la médecine mentale

ObjectivesTo help position the “evolutionist point of view” in psychopathology and psychiatry, given that the history of the influence of Charles Darwin's (1809–1882) theory of evolution in these areas remains unclear and a source of misunderstandings. MethodsWe propose a historical essay on the relationships between Charles Darwin, his work, and psychiatry and psychopathology. The methodology implemented draws on the historiographic rules of verification and contextualization advocated by Henri Ellenberger, and on Sonu Shamdasani's “historical cubism”. ResultsCharles Darwin himself drew much inspiration from the writings of British psychiatrists of his time, and was directly in contact with some of them, such as James Crichton-Browne (1840–1938), with whom he decisively collaborated for his work on the expression of emotions. However, from the middle of nineteenth century to the beginning of First World War, European psychiatry was mainly influenced by the theory of degeneration, and later – to a lesser extent – by the anthropological evolutionism of Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) and the eugenic movement. Some of the founders of modern psychopathology were later influenced by an evolutionary approach, in particular Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) who, together with Sándor Ferenczi (1873–1933), applied to mental disorders hypotheses that were influenced mainly by the psychological Lamarckism of August Pauly (1850–1914) and the recapitulationism of Ernst Heckel (1834–1919). More recently, John Bowlby (1907–1990), through his theory of attachment, became a precursor of neodarwinian psychopathology. DiscussionDespite appearances, the degeneracy theory, Spencerism, and eugenics all differed markedly from Darwin's thinking, particularly with respect to the complex mechanisms of natural selection. Although more sophisticated, the evolutionary approach according to Freud and Ferenczi was based on biological principles that were challenged by scientific discoveries in the interwar period. Bowlby's continuators, and in particular the somewhat tendentious sociobiology, lost sight of the issue of pre-human biological evolution. ConclusionFinally, the path remains open today for a rational Darwinian approach to human emotions and their vicissitudes.

Sir James Crichton-Browne

I am most grateful to Dr Thomas Walmsley for keeping alive the memory of Sir James Crichton-Browne ( Psychiatric Bulletin , January 2003, 27 , 20-22), one of the very few really outstanding Victorian asylum alienists. Crichton-Browne was the Medical Superintendent of the West Riding Asylum,

Familial temporal lobe epilepsy in the 19th century

PurposeTo draw attention to a publication showing that familial temporal lobe epilepsy had been described in 1895, considerably earlier than 1994, usually thought to be the date of the original account of the disorder MethodsExamination of the contents of Sir James Crichton-Browne’s Cavendish lecture on ‘Dreamy mental states’ that was published in the Lancet in mid-1895 ResultsAt a time when the clinical phenomena that later became associated with the idea of temporal lobe epilepsy were beginning to become known, Creighton-Browne described the presence of this disorder in members of four consecutive generations of a British family throughout the course of the 19th Century ConclusionsThere is evidence that the genetic abnormality responsible for familial temporal epilepsy had probably appeared considerably earlier than hitherto thought

Yorkshire’s influence on the understanding and treatment of mental diseases in Victorian Britain: The golden triad of York, Wakefield, and Leeds

ABSTRACTIn the late-eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, a more humane approach to the care of the insane in Britain was catalyzed in part by the illness of King George III. The Reform Movement envisaged “moral” treatment in asylums in pleasant rural environments, but these aspirations were overwhelmed by industrialization, urbanization, and the scale of the need, such that most asylums became gigantic institutions for chronic insanity. Three institutions in Yorkshire remained beacons of enlightenment in the general gloom of Victorian alienism: the Retreat in York founded and developed by the Quaker Tuke family; the West Riding Lunatic Asylum in Wakefield led by Sir James Crichton-Browne, which initiated research into brain and mental diseases; and the Leeds Medical School and Wakefield axis associated with Sir Thomas Clifford Allbutt, which pioneered teaching of mental diseases and, later, the first Chair of Psychiatry. Three other Yorkshiremen who greatly influenced nineteenth-century “neuropsychiatry” in Britain and abroad were Thomas Laycock in York and Edinburgh, and Henry Maudsley and John Hughlings Jackson in London.

Yorkshire's influence on the foundation of British Neurology

In a paper to the Royal Society in 1939, Lord Adrian (1889–1977) described the era between 1870 and 1900 as ‘a classical period in the history of medicine, the period...

A neurological letter from West Yorkshire

Yorkshire, it is said, is ‘a country within a county’. It boasts the famous limestone scenery of the Yorkshire dales, the popular historic city of York, beautiful coastline including traditional...

‘This excellent observer …’: the correspondence between Charles Darwin and James Crichton-Browne, 1869-75

Between May 1869 and December 1875, Charles Darwin exchanged more than 40 letters with James Crichton-Browne, superintendent of the West Riding Pauper Lunatic Asylum, Wakefield, Yorkshire. This paper charts their relationship within the context of Darwin's wider research networks and methods; it analyses the contribution that Crichton-Browne made to the writing of Expression, arguing that the information he provided materially affected Darwin's thesis, and that it was partly the need to assimilate this that led Darwin to publish Expression separately from Descent. The letters help to reconstruct Crichton-Browne's early research interests, and document Darwin's little-explored role as a patron. Both men are revealed within a collaborative scientific network, with each of them at various times a beneficiary or a promoter.

Sir James Crichton-Browne

In his biographical note on Sir James Crichton-Browne (September 2005 JRSM1), Dr E H Jellinek incorrectly states that John Hughlings Jackson was apprenticed to Thomas Laycock. In fact, Hughlings Jackson was apprenticed to Mr William Charles Anderson, a prosperous physician in the city of York.2 Laycock was Lecturer at the York Medical School, where he taught Hughlings Jackson the principles and practice of medicine. It was as a medical student that Hughlings Jackson was first exposed to Laycock's ideas about the reflex function of the brain, concepts that had an important influence on Jacksonian neurology.3

Sir James Crichton-Browne

Sir James Crichton-Browne

Sir James Crichton-Browne (1840–1938): Pioneer Neurologist and Scientific Drop-Out

Sir James Crichton-Browne (1840–1938): Pioneer Neurologist and Scientific Drop-Out

Sir James Crichton-Browne: Victorian psychiatrist and public health reformer.

Sir James Crichton-Browne: Victorian psychiatrist and public health reformer.

Sir James Crichton-Browne

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Sir James Crichton-Browne

Sir James Crichton-Browne

Crichton-Browne's biological psychiatry

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.

W. C. M'Intosh and A. J. Macfarlan: Early clinical photography in Scotland

The origins and early development of photography in Scotland have been much discussed.1 The involvement of medically trained men in its early years is also well docunlented.2 However, surprisingly little is known about early Scottish clinical photography. In fact only Alison Gernsheim has specifically written about Victorian clinical photography.3 The more general field of medical photography is better served. Contributions include general surveys, studies of developments in particular countries, and an important monograph by Fox and Lawrence about how medical men used photography to enhance their professional prospects.4 Gilman's work identifies a cultural tradition of representing the insane, and the history of clinical psychiatric photography is a significant part of this broader enterprise. Gilman links together historical figures such as Hugh Diamond, John Conolly, W. A. F. Browne, his son James Crichton-Browne and Charles Darwin, all of whom either produced, used or circulated clinical photographs of the insane.5

Dreamy mental states in late 20th century neurology

In 1895 Sir James Crichton-Browne lectured on the dreamy mental states that had largely gone unnoticed until his old friend John Hughlings Jackson had first recognized them nearly 20 years earlier as a component of some epileptic seizures. In 1897 Jackson described the association between such dreamy states and pathology in the uncinate gyrus of the brain, thus delineating the phenomenon of uncinate (temporal lobe) epilepsy. Crichton-Browne's account of dreamy states is easier to follow than Jackson's various writings on the subject, and makes it clear that such states are not always epileptic in nature. Jackson believed that epileptic dreamy states were not due to the brain areas responsible being involved by the epileptic discharge itself, but were release phenomena resulting from the discharge inactivating higher levels of brain function. In the century since Jackson, there has been little advance in understanding of the detailed mechanisms of production of the various abnormal psychic experiences which occur in these dreamy states which, following Kinnier Wilson's analysis 1928, are now more usually considered in terms of their individual components.

The changing 19th‐century view of epilepsy as reflected in the West Riding Lunatic Asylum Medical Reports , 1871–1876, vols 1–6

The West Riding Lunatic Asylum Medical Reports (WRLAMR) were published from 1871 to 1876. Organized by Sir James Crichton-Browne at a little-known mental asylum in northern England, the WRLAMR contains many historically important works in neurology by such landmark figures as Sir David Ferrier and John Hughlings Jackson. The writings on epilepsy in the WRLAMR are particularly important and reveal the 19th-century shift in understanding the etiology of seizures.

Edward Mapother and the making of the Maudsley Hospital.

I am particularly grateful for the privilege of delivering the first Mapother Lecture. I believe it will be appropriate to devote it to a review of Professor Mapother's life and his work in shaping the Maudsley Hospital, with which he is inseparably connected. It is nearly thirty years since his death. The course of events since then has shown on what sure foundations he built. Those like myself who had daily contact with him during the later years of his life felt great respect and admiration, as well as warm affection, for him; but it is only in the perspective of recent history that the full measure of his achievement can be seen: perhaps not even yet. In preparing this Address I have been mindful of what Sir James Crichton-Browne said when delivering the first Maudsley Lecture in 1920—‘the last thing the donor of this Lectureship, retiring and shy of publicity as he was, would have wished would be that its inaugural discourse should be devoted to any elaborate eulogy of himself.’ It is an éloge rather than a Eulogy that I would wish to put before you this evening; Condorcet, a master of the art of obituary appraisal, said that an academic éloge should not be a panegyric but an effort to report the truth about a scholar and to do him full justice.

The Ferrier lecture, 1968. Motor apparatus of the baboon's hand.

It is exactly 40 years since Ferrier died, and 39 years since Sherrington gave the first Ferrier Lecture in honour of his work. Sherrington (1906) had dedicated The integrative action of the nervous system to Ferrier ‘in token of recognition of his many services to the experimental physiology of the central nervous system’. At Aberdeen Ferrier had been taught by Bain, the Professor of Logic, who kept a model of the human brain upon his lecture table. Ferrier moved to London in 1870, and was excited by Hughlings Jackson’s revolutionary discoveries and ideas about the nature and localization of the sensory and motor functions of the human brain. Early in 1873 he discussed Fritsch & Hitzig’s (1870) pioneer galvanic stimulations of the dog’s cortex with his friend James Crichton-Browne. In the spring and summer of that year he performed his pioneer faradic stimulations of the brains of monkeys in the laboratory of the West Riding Lunatic Asylum, of which Crichton-Browne was Medical Director (Sherrington 1928). He sought to ‘put to experimental proof the views entertained by Dr Hughlings Jackson on the pathology of Epilepsy, Chorea and Hemiplegia, by imitating artificially the "destroying" and “discharging lesions” of disease which his writings have defined and differentiated’ (Ferrier 1873). 'The phenomena of localized and unilateral convulsive movements, depending, as Hughlings Jackson shows, on vital irritation of certain regions of the cortex, are essentially of the same nature as those caused by electrisation of the same regions’ (1876, p. 133). But Ferrier believed that many of the movements he mapped by electrical stimulation had evidently a purposive or volitional character’ (1876, p. 163). In 1876 he transferred his monkey map to the brain of man, and described of the relation between brain fissures and bony landmarks; and in 1883 he suggested that the time had come when localized cerebral lesions should be excised by the surgeon. For this, as he later recalled with amusement, he was criticized in an editorial in the Lancet (Ferrier, 1888), but in 1884 Godlee removed a localized tumour ‘of the size of a walnut’ (Sherrington 1928) from the Rolandic cortex through an opening exactly overlying it and but little larger than itself. Ferrier and Hughlings Jackson both witnessed this memorable operation (Trotter 1934). As time went on, experimentalists interested themselves more in defining details of localization than in developing concepts of function (Phillips 1966). ‘More penetrative modes and aims of analysis came to be little pursued,’ wrote Sherrington (1928). ‘A localization vogue reigned for nearly a quarter of a century, and became in due course tedious and relatively infertile.’