Troubled by Faith: Insanity and the Supernatural in the Age of the Asylum

The nineteenth century was a time of extraordinary scientific innovation, but with the rise of psychiatry, faiths and popular beliefs were often seen as signs of a diseased mind. By exploring the beliefs of asylum patients, we see the nineteenth century in a new light, with science, faith, and the supernatural deeply entangled in a fast-changing world.

The birth of psychiatry in the early nineteenth-century fundamentally changed how madness was categorised and understood. A century on, their...