ABSTRACT
George Man Burrows (1771–1846) was a physician and medical writer whose interests involved him in several significant medical controversies of his time. He also co-founded the London Medical Repository with William Royston in 1814. In 1816, Burrows changed his focus, retiring as a general practitioner and focusing on the treatment of insanity, first running a small asylum in Chelsea and then in 1823 opening Clapham Retreat in Surrey. He operated Clapham until a highly publicized case of wrongful confinement in 1829 so badly damaged his reputation that Burrows ‘largely withdrew from work as an alienist’. Burrows’s commentary on suicide provides an interesting example of the conflicts and tensions inherent in the medical profession’s efforts to assert its expertise and authority over mental phenomena in general, and over the phenomenon of self-destruction in particular.
