ABSTRACT
England in the early eighteenth century was a country of some five and a half million people who lived for the most part in small towns and villages. There were few towns of appreciable size—London had a population of little over half a million and Bristol had about fifty thousand inhabitants. There was no clear definition of what mental disorder was, and certainly no recognition of the mentally ill or handicapped as a category requiring a distinct form of treatment. Society in its more primitive forms sees the manifestations of mental disorder as proof of divine powers, or evidence of divine disfavour. The Church of England was the only considerable religious force in England in the first half of the eighteenth century. Philosophers did not condemn the mentally disordered, but this was largely because they ignored them and their problems completely. Bethlem has always had its defenders and attackers.
