West Riding Lunatic Asylum 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.

A month in the country: The sesquicentenary of David Ferrier's classical cerebral localisation researches of 1873.

The experimental studies of David Ferrier (1843-1928), establishing many of the principles of cerebral localisation which still underpin neurological reasoning in clinical practice, were first reported 150 years ago. This paper briefly reviews Ferrier's experimental work, first undertaken in the laboratory at the West Riding Lunatic Asylum in Wakefield, West Yorkshire and his resulting publications of 1873, as well as some contemporaneous responses to his findings. These not only established 'motor centres' pertinent to physiology and the signs of cerebral disease but also, from the outset, had ramifications for Ferrier's understanding of higher mental functions. That linguistic, mnemonic and perceptual cognitive functions might be related to localised areas within the brain received its most emphatic initial impetus from Ferrier's work.

Impact, orthodoxy and peer review

Impact, orthodoxy and peer review

James Crichton Browne and controlled evaluation of drug treatment for mental illness

James Crichton Browne and controlled evaluation of drug treatment for mental illness

Malcolm Parsons, Yorkshire and the history of medicine, York, William Sessions, 2002, pp. viii, 111, illus., £6.50 (+£1.20 p&p UK; +£2.00 p&p overseas), (paperback 1-85072-273-0). Orders to: William Sessions Ltd, Huntington Road, York Y031 9HS, UK.

Malcolm Parsons, Yorkshire and the history of medicine, York, William Sessions, 2002, pp. viii, 111, illus., £6.50 (+£1.20 p&p UK; +£2.00 p&p overseas), (paperback 1-85072-273-0). Orders to: William Sessions Ltd, Huntington Road, York Y031 9HS, UK. - Volume 48 Issue 3

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.

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.’

The West Riding Lunatic Asylum Medical Reports. Edited by J. Ceichtonbrowne, M.D., F.R.C.S.E. Vol. V., 1875.

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The West Riding Lunatic Asylum Medical Reports. Edited by J. Ceichtonbrowne, M.D., F.R.C.S.E. Vol. V., 1875.

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Art. XXX.—The West Riding Lunatic Asylum Medical Reports.

Art. XXX.—The West Riding Lunatic Asylum Medical Reports.

Experiments on the brain of monkeys.—No. I

The facts recorded in this paper are the results obtained by electrical stimulation of the brain of monkeys, after the method described by the author in the West Riding Lunatic Asylum Medical Reports, vol. iii. 1873. They formed part of a paper “On the Localization of Function in the Brain,” read before the Royal Society on March 5, 1874. This memoir also contained the results of other experiments on the brain of monkeys, chiefly relating to the effects of localized lesions of several parts of the hemispheres, with a view to determine the significance, as regards sensation and motion, of the phenomena caused by electrical irritation.

The West Riding Lunatic Asylum Medical Reports

The West Riding Lunatic Asylum Medical Reports

The West Riding Lunatic Asylum Medical Reports. Edited by J. Crichton Browne, M.D., F.R.S.E. Vol. iv.

The West Riding Lunatic Asylum Medical Reports. Edited by J. Crichton Browne, M.D., F.R.S.E. Vol. iv.

Art. XXII.—The West Riding Lunatic Asylum Medical Reports.

Art. XXII.—The West Riding Lunatic Asylum Medical Reports.

Bibliographical Notices The West Riding Lunatic Asylum Medical Reports . Edited by J. Crichton Browne, M.D., F.R.S.E. Vol. iii. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1873. pp. vi., 349.

Bibliographical Notices The West Riding Lunatic Asylum Medical Reports . Edited by J. Crichton Browne, M.D., F.R.S.E. Vol. iii. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1873. pp. vi., 349.

The West Riding Lunatic Asylum Medical Reports. by J. Crichton Browne, M.D. Vol. 3. Smith, Elder, and Co., 1873.

The West Riding Lunatic Asylum Medical Reports. by J. Crichton Browne, M.D. Vol. 3. Smith, Elder, and Co., 1873.

The West Riding Lunatic Asylum Medical Reports. by J. Crichton Browne, M.D. Vol. 3. Smith, Elder, and Co., 1873.

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ART. XXVI.???The West Riding Lunatic Asylum Medical Reports

ART. XXVI.???The West Riding Lunatic Asylum Medical Reports

The West Riding Lunatic Asylum Medical Reports. Edited by J. Crichton Browne, M.D. Vol. 2. 1872.

The West Riding Lunatic Asylum Medical Reports. Edited by J. Crichton Browne, M.D. Vol. 2. 1872.

The West Riding Lunatic Asylum Medical Reports

Although it would be untrue to say that this is a valuable contribution to science, yet that it is an important addition to medical literature no one will deny. In it we see fresh evidence of the fact that asylum physicians are becoming more and more alive to the necessity for asserting themselves, and showing themselves in their true colours. If they do nothing else they will furnish an excellent answer to certain disappointed men who, having failed to establish themselves in practice, have assumed the dignity of censors of their medical brethren. Judging all men by their own standard, they have not failed to single out asylum physicians as an object of attack, and have charged them with all the sins of incompetence, negligence, and ignorance. For nearly a year these unfortunate men could hardly take up a medical paper without seeing a violent attack on the manner in which they performed their duties, and not only did the medical journals assail them, but also a certain portion of the daily press, taking its cue from these writers, heaped on abuse and censure until the most impartial reader began to think that the asylum doctors must be a set of the most unmitigated ruffians under the sun. Of the unfairness of this we will say nothing now; we hope that a more generous spirit will prevail in future, and that physicians in asylums will rather be encouraged to do well than violently abused for occasionally making those mistakes to which all human beings are liable.