Andrew Scull
Author of Madness in Civilization: A Cultural History of Insanity from the Bible to Freud, and from the Madhouse to Modern Medicine
Book Recommendations:
Recommended by Andrew Scull
“A remarkable, highly original, and elegantly written history of the Lebanon Hospital for the Insane, or ʿAṣfūriyyeh. Joelle Abi-Rached insightfully links the changing fortunes of this Quaker foundation to the history of a society wracked by wars and sectarian conflict. Despite, or perhaps because of its own resolutely nonsectarian character, it ultimately lost its battle to survive, and it now lies in ruins, mute but vivid testimony to the decline and breakdown of both state and society in late twentieth-century Lebanon.” (from Amazon)
The development of psychiatry in the Middle East, viewed through the history of one of the first modern mental hospitals in the region. ʿAṣfūriyyeh (formally, the Lebanon Hospital for the Insane) was founded by a Swiss Quaker missionary in 1896, one of the first modern psychiatric hospitals in the Middle East. It closed its doors in 1982, a victim of Lebanon's brutal fifteen-year civil war. In this book, Joelle Abi-Rached uses the rise and fall of ʿAṣfūriyyeh as a lens through which to examine the development of modern psychiatric theory and practice in the region as well as the sociopolitical history of modern Lebanon. Abi-Rached shows how ʿAṣfūriyyeh's role shifted from a missionary enterprise to a national institution with wide regional influence. She offers a gripping chronicle of patients' and staff members' experiences during the Lebanese Civil War and analyzes the hospital's distinctive nonsectarian philosophy. When ʿAṣfūriyyeh closed down, health in general and mental health in particular became more visibly "sectarianized"—monopolized by various religious and political actors. Once hailed for its progressive approach to mental illness and its cosmopolitanism, ʿAṣfūriyyeh became a stigmatizing term, a byword for madness and deviance, ultimately epitomizing a failed project of modernity. Reflecting on the afterlife of this and other medical institutions, especially those affected by war, Abi-Rached calls for a new "ethics of memory," more attuned to our global yet increasingly fragmented, unstable, and violent present. The book received the 2019 Jack D. Pressman-Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Development Award in 20th Century History of Medicine or Biomedical Sciences from the American Association for the History of Medicine "for outstanding work in twentieth-century history of medicine or medical biomedical sciences." "One of the best new Lebanon History books" - BookAuthority