This Way Madness Lies: The Asylum and Beyond

This Way Madness Lies is a thought-provoking exploration of the history of madness and its treatment as seen through the lens of its proverbial home: Bethlem Royal Hospital, London, popularly known as Bedlam. The book charts the evolution of the asylum through four incarnations: the eighteenth-century madhouse, the nineteenth century asylum, the twentieth-century mental hospital, and the post-asylum modern day, when mental health has become the concern of the wider community. The book reveals the role that the history of madness and its treatment has played in creating the landscape of the asylum, in all its iterations.Moving and sometimes provocative illustrations sourced from the Wellcome Trust’s exceptional collection and the Bethlem Royal Hospital’s archive highlight the trajectory of each successive era of institution: founded in the optimistic spirit of humanitarian reform but even