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About this product
Product Identifiers
PublisherMelbourne University Publishing
ISBN-100522848044
ISBN-139780522848045
eBay Product ID (ePID)445531
Product Key Features
Number of Pages188 Pages
LanguageEnglish
Publication NameLast of the Lunatics
SubjectHealth Care Delivery, General, Psychopathology / General, Medical
Publication Year1994
TypeTextbook
AuthorJohn Cawte
Subject AreaFiction, Biography & Autobiography, Psychology, Medical, History
FormatTrade Paperback
Dimensions
Item Height0.4 in
Item Weight8.2 Oz
Item Length8.4 in
Item Width5.5 in
Additional Product Features
Intended AudienceScholarly & Professional
LCCN00-303787
Reviews"This fascinating book is a distillation of a lifetime of humane and common sense treatment of the mentally ill." -- Medical Journal of Australia, "The real pleasure of this book lies in the refreshing lack of jargon, its honesty and simplicity and its puncturing of the balloons of political correctness. There is also a wonderful collection of case histories which all psychiatrists will immediately feel at home with despite the intervening years and technological developments. It is a thoughtful book and a wise one. It seamlessly connects our psychiatric past and present and forcefully brings to mind the fate of those who forget their own history." - Canadian Psychiatric Journal, "This fascinating book is a distillation of a lifetime of humane and common sense treatment of the mentally ill." - Medical Journal of Australia, "The real pleasure of this book lies in the refreshing lack of jargon, its honesty and simplicity and its puncturing of the balloons of political correctness. There is also a wonderful collection of case histories which all psychiatrists will immediately feel at home with despite the intervening years and technological developments. It is a thoughtful book and a wise one. It seamlessly connects our psychiatric past and present and forcefully brings to mind the fate of those who forget their own history." -- Canadian Psychiatric Journal
Dewey Edition21
TitleLeadingThe
IllustratedYes
Dewey Decimal616.89/0092 B
SynopsisJohn Cawte looks back in amazement to his years as a young doctor in an Australian madhouse. He now recognises the people he treated in the early 1950s as 'the last of the lunatics'. Anti-psychotic and anti-depressant drugs were unknown. Bursting asylums, housing an uproar of insanity, were wastelands of stigma and dread. 'Management' techniques ranged from straitjackets and padded cells to isolation and primitive shock treatments. Miraculously, Cawte's case notes were saved from destruction. Rereading them after forty years, he was gripped by the horror they revealed and the questions they raised. Much has changed for the better. Many of the fearful illnesses he recorded have disappeared, treatments are vastly more effective and stigma has lessened. But his notes hold a surprising and challenging lesson--that temporary 'asylum' from the stresses of life is often all that a disturbed person needs for recovery. The Last of the Lunatics is rich and moving. The personal stories recorded by a perceptive young man have been filtered by experience and sharpened by telling literary references. Doctors, psychiatrists, those who remember and those who wonder about the human condition will be touched by this compassionate book., A searing historical account of the treatment of the mentally ill in Australia before the invention of tranquilizers.
LC Classification NumberRC451.A788C39 1998
