Illustrations of Madness

A detail from the lower portion of James Tilly Matthews' illustration of the Air Loom featured in John Haslam's Illustrations of Madness (1810) - Source: Wellcome Library, London (CC-BY 4.0)

James Tilly Matthews believed that his mind was under the control of the "Air Loom" and that the machine's rays were also brainwashing politicians and plunging Europe into chaos and war. Matthews was confined to London's notorious Bedlam asylum in 1797. In 1810 John Haslam, a London apothecary, published the first ever book-length description of his delusions. Titled Illustrations of Madness, the book is still cited as the first fully described case of what we now call paranoid schizophrenia

Read more: Public Domain Review

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