This ambitious volume, worldwide in scope and ranging from antiquity to the pres
ent, examines the human encounter with Unreason in all its manifestations, the c
hallenges it poses to society and our responses to it. In twelve chapters organi
zed chronologically from the Bible to Freud, from exorcism to mesmerism, from Be
dlam to Victorian asylums, from the theory of humours to modern pharmacology, An
drew Scull writes compellingly about madness, its meanings, its consequences and
our attempts to understand and treat it.
