ABSTRACT
Nineteenth-century body was a body closely bound to its external environment–an entity that could speak not only of its owner’s physical circumstances, but their moral standing. A Model Disease in a Model Site: General Paralysis in the Asylum e interrelation of physical and mental faculties was perfectly illustrated by General Paralysis of the Insane (GPI). GPI was a condition in which patient’s suered from a startling array of bodily symptoms: staggering gait, disturbed re exes, asymmetrical pupils, tremulous voice, and muscular weakness. Disorder and Dissolution: General Paralysis in Life Within many histories of psychiatry, the asylum patient is imagined as an individual closely and intrusively observed: in the panoptic space of the early asylum, by eighteenth-century ‘sightseers’ at Bethlem, or in the photographic portraits collected by Hugh Diamond. In many cases, the muscles of general paralytic patients wasted away as then economic balance of the body broke down.
