ABSTRACT
In the last decade of the eighteenth century a humane method of treating the mentally ill sprang into being in Europe, within a few years came to be adopted in many parts of the civilized world, and after half a century or so faded away. It left in its place restrictive patterns of institutional care of which few people in psychiatry are proud but which persisted until the latter half of the twentieth century. Many psychiatrists have remarked on the common features of moral treatment (as the early movement was called) and the post-Second World War social psychiatry revolution. Were the two movements indeed similar and, if so, could they have been stimulated by similar political and economic conditions? If not, why did moral treatment come into being when it did? The use of moral management was accompanied by claims of excellent recovery rates in mental illness. Were these claims accurate? If so, why were the methods abandoned and what light does the episode throw on the conventional approach to the history of medicine which shows us always progressing to higher levels of technical achievement through a process of scientific discovery?
