Category Archives: Remembering

A geography of stigma

June 16, 2012 – 10:09 pm

The picture below is of the main building to Princess Park Manor, a luxury housing development in North London, that used to be Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum. A recent newspaper article about the apartments notes how they have become an attraction for pop singers and reality TV stars. The Princess Park Manor website lauds the […]

By vaughanbell | Comments (4)

The labels change, the game remains the same

June 10, 2012 – 4:42 pm

Today’s New York Times has a huge feature on the illicit use of stimulant drugs like Ritalin and pharmaceutical amphetamines in colleges and schools by kids ‘seeking an academic edge’. The piece is written like an exposé but if you know a little about the history of amphetamines, it is also incredibly ironic. The ‘illicit […]

By vaughanbell | Comments (5)

A history of human sacrifice

May 18, 2012 – 12:19 pm

A video on the history of human sacrifice is available from Science magazine as part of their special issue on human conflict. Sadly, all the articles are locked behind a paywall but the video is free to view and has science writer Ann Gibbons discussing how the practice evolved through the ages and how archaeologists […]

By vaughanbell | Also posted in Togetherness | Comments (2)

How the British missed a trip

May 8, 2012 – 1:18 pm

The first ever medical report on the effects of magic mushrooms is featured in an article in Current Biology. The excerpt is from a 1799 report entitled ‘On A Poisonous Species of Agaric’ from an issue of The London Medical and Physical Journal. The psychological effects of hallucinogenic, or ‘magic’ mushrooms were first documented in […]

By vaughanbell | Also posted in Inside the Brain | Comments (6)

BBC Future column: earworms

April 29, 2012 – 6:23 pm

From a couple of weeks ago, my column from BBC Future, about everyday brain quirks (as I’ve mentioned previously). Thanks to Maria Panagiotidi for help with this one. “Earworms”, some people call them. Songs that get stuck in your head and go round and round, sometimes for days, sometimes for months. For no apparent reason […]

By tomstafford | Also posted in Hearing and Language, Linkage | Comments (20)

Mind Changers back for another series

April 28, 2012 – 12:32 pm

BBC Radio 4′s brilliant psychology series Mind Changers has made a comeback and has a new season looking at some of the biggest ideas in cognitive science. It has kicked off with programmes on South African psychologist Joseph Wolpe and the treatment of anxiety as well as an edition on Julian Rotter and the idea […]

By vaughanbell | Also posted in Theory | Leave a Comment

How Ghostwatch haunted psychiatry

April 21, 2012 – 1:45 pm

In 1992, the BBC broadcast Ghostwatch, one of the most controversial shows in television history and one that has had a curious and unexpected effect on the course of psychiatry. The programme was introduced as a live report into a haunted house but in reality, it was fiction. This is now a common plot device, […]

By vaughanbell | Also posted in Togetherness | Comments (9)

A bipolar expedition

March 29, 2012 – 4:37 pm

In 2008, The Lancet published an amazing article on the ‘psychological effects of polar expeditions’ that contains a potted history of artic madness. Unfortunately, the paper is locked, or shall we say, frozen, behind a paywall, although this snippet on the history of mental health problems on artic expeditions makes for quite surprising reading. Accounts […]

By vaughanbell | Also posted in Togetherness | Leave a Comment

The hidden history of lobotomy’s non-inventor

March 25, 2012 – 12:40 pm

A fascinating snippet on the notorious supposed inventor of the frontal lobotomy, Egas Moniz, from an article in the Polish Journal of Neurology and Neurosurgery: Egas Moniz: a genius, unlucky looser or a Nobel Committee error? Neurol Neurochir Pol. 2012;46(1):96-103. Lass P, Sławek J, Sitek E. Portuguese neurologist António Egas Moniz is one of the […]

By vaughanbell | Also posted in Inside the Brain | Comments (1)

A fitting tribute to Alan Turing

March 3, 2012 – 12:42 am

Nature has just published a fantastic Alan Turing special issue commemorating 100 years since the birth of the artificial intelligence pioneer, code-breaker and mathematician. It’s a really wonderful edition, available to freely read online, and accompanied by a special podcast that talks to his biographer about Turing’s famous 1936 paper on computable numbers, his contribution […]

By vaughanbell | Also posted in Integrating, Theory | Comments (3)

Gimme Shelter

January 17, 2012 – 1:44 am

The Rolling Stones launched their career in a social therapeutic club, designed to help troubled youth with communication skills. The club became legendary in rock ‘n roll history but its therapeutic roots have almost been forgotten. Eel Pie Island is a small patch on the River Thames famous for the underground club that earned a […]

By vaughanbell | Also posted in Togetherness, Uncategorized | Comments (3)

The cowboy cure

January 3, 2012 – 12:30 pm

The APA Monitor has an article on how ‘nervousness’ in 1800s America was treated by sending male intellectuals ‘out West’ for prolonged periods of cattle roping, hunting, roughriding and male bonding. This, I suspect, sounded a great deal more innocent in the 1800s. But nevertheless, this sort of intense deliberately masculine physical exercise was thought […]

By vaughanbell | Also posted in Togetherness | Comments (7)

Unlikely causes of dementia

December 27, 2011 – 5:36 pm

An article on the history of dementia lists the somewhat odd causes for the degenerative brain condition as given by the pioneering French psychiatrist Jean Etienne Esquirol in 1838: Menstrual disorders, Sequelae [consequences] of delivery, Head injuries, Progression of age, Ataxic fever, Hemorrhoids surgery, Mania and monomania, Paralysis, Apoplexy, Syphilis, Mercury abuse, Dietary excesses, Wine […]

By vaughanbell | Also posted in Inside the Brain | Comments (2)

Diagnosing Tolstoy with non-existent madness

December 23, 2011 – 5:11 pm

A new article on the founder of criminology, Cesare Lombroso, recounts the curious tale of how he met War and Peace author Leo Tolstoy to confirm his theory on how genius and madness were linked. Among other things, Lombroso was convinced that mental ‘degeneration’ was reflected in the face and so could be seen externally. […]

By vaughanbell | Comments (3)

Brain in your medieval pants

December 4, 2011 – 1:57 pm

In Leonardo da Vinci’s anatomical drawings, the penis is connected directly to the brain. A 1986 article “On the sexual intercourse drawings of Leonardo da Vinci” explains why this connection, still commonly proposed today (although mostly as a metaphor it must be said), was thought to be anatomical fact by the great master. “A brief […]

By vaughanbell | Also posted in Inside the Brain, Nonsense | Comments (1)

The rise and fall of ‘space madness’

November 7, 2011 – 10:51 pm

‘Space madness’ was a serious concern for psychiatrists involved in the early space programme. A new article in history of science journal Endeavour tracks the interest in this ‘dreaded disease that never was.’ Much to the surprise of NASA mental health professionals, those who volunteered to be astronauts were neither “suicidal deviants” nor troubled by […]

By vaughanbell | Also posted in Togetherness | Comments (7)
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