Books by Brian W Refford
Talks by Brian W Refford
My book project, Degenerates, Lunatics, and Idiots: Social Perception and Epileptology in Modern ... more My book project, Degenerates, Lunatics, and Idiots: Social Perception and Epileptology in Modern Britain argues that the social assumptions of bourgeois Victorians shaped specifically class-determined modes of clinical treatment for suffering epileptics, individuals often dismissed as degenerates, lunatics, and idiots. My research addresses the persistence of older notions of the causes and treatment of epilepsy in nineteenth-century Britain, how the persistence of these notions shaped popular perceptions of epilepsy, and the ultimate ͞medicalization͟ of attitudes towards epilepsy by the end of the century. At this point, my research has focused upon the perceptions of medical professionals towards the disease, as revealed in the pages of the British Medical Journal.
Drafts by Brian W Refford
Unpublished research paper.
Review of GR Searle, Entrepreneurial Politics in Mid-Victorian Britain
Book Reviews by Brian W Refford
H-War, 2023
There are pivotal events that loom large in American historical memory. For many of the fast disa... more There are pivotal events that loom large in American historical memory. For many of the fast disappearing "greatest generation," renowned naval historian Craig L. Symonds observes that D-Day, June 6 th , 1944, was a "moment …etched in our national memory."1 However, prior to Overlord there was Neptune, the essential build-up phase of the cross-Channel expedition. "D-Day," Symonds explains, was "a moment with a long backstory, one that has been told only in fragments and which is too often overlooked."2 In Neptune-The Allied Invasion of Europe and the D-Day Landings, Symonds argues that Operation Overlord-the invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe-depended upon the success of Operation Neptune, and "could not have taken place without it."3
In her study The Cruel Madness of Love: Sex, Syphilis, and Psychiatry in Scotland, Gayle Davis su... more In her study The Cruel Madness of Love: Sex, Syphilis, and Psychiatry in Scotland, Gayle Davis suggests that µpsychiatric diagnoses were constructed within a wider social context ¶ in the Calvinist soul of Scottish psychiatrists in the half-century after 1880. (p.17) Little understood before 1900, General Paralysis of the Insane (GPI) was a neurosyphilitic disorder characterized by a progressive degeneration of the mind and body. (pp.15-16) In Scotland, the connection between GPI and syphilis was stoutly resisted within the decidedly middle-class psychiatric community until well after 1900. More significantly, Davis attempts to illuminate a social history of psychiatry as reflected in what she describes as the µdeveloping epistemological relationship between syphilis and insanity. ¶ (pp.15-17) Following the lead of Michel Foucault, contemporary scholarship has emphasized the µrise of the asylum ¶ during the nineteenth century as a consequence of the bourgeois social and cultural values of Scottish psychiatrists, and the µwider shifting relations between patients, doctor, and state. ¶ (p.17) Davis laments that much of current scholarship µtends to be narrowly clinical in focus, ¶ rather than providing a broader overview of what she describes in her perceptive study as the µsociological impulse. ¶ (p.18) Explaining disease was not a µvalue free enterprise, ¶ but rather drew upon µgeneration-specific repertoire of verbal constructs. ¶ (p.30) Employing a careful analysis of the evolving meaning of language in medical practice, Davis builds a framing methodology, an interpretative construct that explores the interconnections between medicine and society, which allows scholars µto engage with the social and cultural perceptions that surround and shape representations of disease. ¶ (p.30) She contends that current scholarship relies upon overused published sources that reflect µcontemporary medical orthodoxy, ¶ sources that make insufficient use of linguistically revealing case notes. (pp.20-22) Case notes, Davis maintains, have the distinct advantage of revealing the diversity of opinion within the psychiatric profession regarding the social and cultural implications inherent in the putative relationship between GPI and syphilis. (p.23) Davis explores these implications within the institutional context of the Scottish Poor Law Act of 1845. Prior to this landmark reform, there was no statutory requirement for chartered asylums in Scotland, and parish and burghal authorities maintained poorhouses to provide rudimentary care for the pauper insane. (p.44) The 1845 Act was adopted ± in partto deal with the burdensome problem of the pauper insane by creating elected parochial boards that were answerable to a nationwide Board of Supervision. (p.45) This act created two levels of administration ± which operated at the local level and the Board of Supervision with its role of overseeing a µnational ¶ standard ± with the µline of demarcation [set] at pauperism. ¶ (p.45) Men who fell below this line came under the µpurview ¶ of Parochial Boards that were legally required to provide Poorhouses for their jurisdictions or make other forms for provision, while those mentally trouble people who were not engulfed by pauperism had their needs tended to primarily by chartered royal asylums. (p.45)
The Journal of British Studies, Jan 1, 2009
The Journal of British Studies, Jan 1, 2008
Journal of British Studies, Jan 1, 2008
Review of White Gold: The Extraordinary Story of Thomas Pellow and Islam's One Million White Slaves
Conference Presentations by Brian W Refford
Paper read at the Port Histories Conference, University of the West of England, Bristol, UK
Papers by Brian W Refford
Journal of British Studies, Jul 1, 2008
In recent years, a more balanced anthropological approach toward the controversial Pacific explor... more In recent years, a more balanced anthropological approach toward the controversial Pacific explorer Captain James Cook has begun to replace the critical interpretations in vogue since the 1960s. In Captain Cook: Voyager between Two Worlds, the Australian historian ...
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Books by Brian W Refford
Talks by Brian W Refford
Drafts by Brian W Refford
Book Reviews by Brian W Refford
Conference Presentations by Brian W Refford
Papers by Brian W Refford