ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the representation of people considered to be seriously unreasonable in western medical, social and cultural history. It is argued that a fairly consistent emphasis on the extraordinary and extreme in these representations has probably helped to maintain some underlying sense among the people involved in making these representations—as well as those who hear or read about them—that they themselves do not have unhealthy minds. To identify madness in another human being has so often involved the explicit or implicit identification of sanity in the self-making that identification. This would appear to be a key means by which the idea has been maintained that it is possible to perceive the health of the mind: to know with certainty that some people are sane. By extension, it has also allowed for a greater feeling of confidence when perceiving other things: not least, the health of the body. This chapter begins with a discussion of delirium and then examines other forms of madness in western history. Key sources include the work of Martin Luther, Charles Dickens, Ambroise Paré and George III’s mind physicians.
