Jonathon Erlen

Lash’s: A bitter medicine: Biochemical analysis of an historical proprietary medicine

Patent medicines were widely used during the late 1800s and early 1900s. Bitters were one important subtype of patent medicines that were typically made from extracts of bitter tasting herbs. Lash’s Bitters was a popular patent medicine that was advertised as an extract of the bark of the buckthorn tree, Rhamnus purshiana, and was sold as a laxative. Analysis of the contents of an undisturbed bottle of Lashs Bitters, ca. 1918, revealed an ethanol content of 19.2% by volume as well as trace amounts of methanol. Potentially toxic concentrations of lead, 295 mg/dl, were also found. Interestingly, the medicine contained none of the active ingredient found in Rhamnus purshiana.

Review of Dissertations : Hidden treasures in the history of psychiatry

Editors note. The editor is grateful to Dr Erlen for compiling this excellent list of dissertations on topics related to the history of psychiatry. Their thematic richness is immensely reassuring and suggests that the discipline is doing very well. Let us hope that many of the authors will remain in this field. For understandable reasons, the lists are biased in favour of works in English. We are sure that research of similar high quality is going on in other languages, and History of Psychiatry would be pleased to publish compilations from as many languages as possible.

Research on the history of psychiatry

Birth pangs of a community mental health center. Hall, Leland King, 1975, PhD, Union Institute and University, 110 pp. DP10964 The author discusses the background to the passage of the 1963 Community Mental Health Centers Act and its impact on the creation and evolution of mental health facilities in the state of New Jersey, comparing the differences in institutions that are hospital-based versus those that are free-standing. The human image in art and nature: a psycho-morphological study based on the orgone energy functions discovered by Wilhelm Reich. Research on the history of psychiatry*

Research on the history of psychiatry Dissertation Abstracts, 2009 (Part 2)

Dr Jonathon Erlen** has provided the following annotated list of dissertations relevant to our field, based on his review of Dissertation Abstracts published in 2009. Each entry gives title, author, year, doctorate, institution, number of pages (if known) and unique identifier/order number. Note that in titles, no accents are used in Dissertation Abstracts. Part 1 of the 2009 list was published in Histopry of Psychiatry, 21(4): 507–10.

Feigned Insanity in Nineteenth Century America: Experts, Explanations, Evaluations and Exculpations

We begin this appraisal of the history of feigned insanity in nineteenth century America with a quotation in the tradition of our nineteenth century predecessors. Ulysses of the Trojan Wars; David, King of Israel; L. Junius Brutus of ancient Rome; and Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Edgar (Eng Lear) were regularly cited in the nineteenth century literature as evidencing feigncd insanity, and a quote by Shakespeare was often included at or near the beginning of articles of the period. Further, we start with a twentieth century quotation to highlight the fact that the dilemmas and the analysis of feigned insanity, now more commonly referred to as malingered mental illness, have changed little since the early nineteenth century. In this paper we survey the literature on feigned insanity in nineteenth century America, focusing on the explanation of the phenomenon, the examination of the patient/defendant to determine feigning, the use of feigning for exculpation, and the ways in which the conduct and reporting of the evaluation of feigned insanity in nineteenth century America represent a benchmark for the emerging expertise of the profession of psychiatry. Beforc proceeding to the analysis, we offer some background material to provide a context for the discussion of feigned insanity.