Moments of Unreason

Moments of Unreason is the first detailed study of a private asylum in North America: the Homewood Retreat in Guelph, Ontario, established in 1883 as an early Canadian venture into corporate health care. Cheryl Krasnick Warsh studies the careers of its first two medical superintendents, Stephen Lett and Alfred Hobbs, which spanned the evolution of mental health theory from moral management to mental therapeutics and, later, neuro-psychiatry. This evolution did not make practical management of the Institute less complex: an under-paid, undertrained work force combined with an unruly patient population resulted in instances of neglect, abuse, and over-medication.