ABSTRACT
Driven by recommendations of the Select Committee to Consider the State of the Lunatic Poor in Ireland (1817), a centrally administered public asylum system under British colonial administration was established in early nineteenth-century Ireland. The Select Committee asserted that, for reasons ranging from 'hereditary scrofulous habits of the lower classes' to 'the use of ardent spirits [and] mercury', there was a high rate of 'Irish insanity' in the colony. The existence of an Irish 'insanity epidemic' has been refuted in detail in the author's recent work, Irish Insanity 1800-2000. The contributions of Foucault to the creation of critical, comparative multi-causal histories cannot be underestimated, an approach to historical sociology which has some continuity with that posited by Weber. Ireland had a comparatively limited experience of leprosy and there was an absence of any extensive institutional intervention for such diseases. The impact of colonialism on the Irish experience of mental hospital utilisation is an area that warrants consideration.
