William A. F. Browne - Crichton Royal: Moral Treatment and Therapeutic Approaches

Crichton Royal: Moral Treatment and Therapeutic Approaches

"....Browne persisted, even insisting on the first lighting of the Montrose asylum with gas in 1836, an event which prompted the assembly of a crowd at the gate to witness and perhaps to enjoy the conflagration which was expected inevitably to follow.... The asylum did not burn down. On the contrary, it flourished in Browne's hands as never before...." Andrew Scull (1991) The Asylum as Utopia: W.A.F. Browne and the Mid-Nineteenth Century Consolidation of Psychiatry London and New York: Tavistock/Routledge, page xiv.

"Mrs Crichton was determined that from its start the Crichton Royal should be under medical direction. She had read, and been impressed by, Dr W.A.F. Browne's book What Asylums Were, Are, and Ought To Be - and she decided that he was the man she would like to see in charge of the new institution...." D.K.Henderson (1964) The Evolution of Psychiatry in Scotland, page 73.

"Dr Browne's Annual Reports form the only Reports of the Institution during his period of office. They are printed by the Dumfries Herald, except for the 13th Report (for 1852) printed by the Crichton Press.... The first patient is admitted on 4th June 1839 - a female pauper from the North Block of the old Dumfries and Galloway Royal Infirmary....it is of interest to note that this patient recovers five years later, in May 1844...." Charles Cromhall Easterbrook (1940) The Chronicle of Crichton Royal (1833-1936), page 21.

"Where there is a work of art, there is no madness." Michel Foucault Madness and Civilization, quoted by Dr Maureen Park (2010) (in) Art in Madness: Dr W.A.F. Browne's Collection of Patient Art at Crichton Royal Institution, Dumfries, page xv.

"Moved by early predilection, - my father, a phrenologist of the old school, was assistant to George Combe at his lectures for a time, and was also for some years one of the Henderson trustees - I have dipped into that old controversy and....this I will say, that from our point of view today, the phrenologists, notwithstanding their egregious errors, had the best of it both in argument and temper." James Crichton-Browne The Story of the Brain Lecture delivered in Edinburgh, 29th February, 1924.

Browne was a passionate advocate of the moral treatment of the insane and he hated any suggestion of prejudice against the mentally ill.

"There is in this community no compulsion, no chains, no corporal chastisement, simply because these are proved to be less effectual means of carrying any point than persuasion, emulation, and the desire of earning gratification... such is a faithful picture of what may be seen in many institutions, and of what might be seen in all, were asylums conducted as they ought to be." William A.F. Browne (1837) What Asylums Were, Are, and Ought To Be.

In 1838 the wealthy philanthropist Elizabeth Crichton persuaded Browne to accept the position of physician superintendent of her newly constructed Crichton Royal Hospital in Dumfries. Here he encouraged his patients with writing, art and drama and a host of other activities, long anticipating the clinical approaches of occupational therapy and art therapy. He made regular records of his patients' dreams, and of their social activities and groupings. In 1855, the Crichton was visited by the celebrated American reformer Dorothea Dix and she seems to have struck up a positive relationship with Magdalene Browne, taking an interest in her traditional Scottish cuisine, before moving on to her Edinburgh friends, Mr and Mrs Robert Chambers. Browne remained at the Crichton until 1857 when his outstanding reputation resulted in his appointment as the first Medical Commissioner to the Scottish asylums. In 1866, he was elected President of the Medico-Psychological Association, and he used his Presidential Address as an opportunity to spell out (at considerable length) his concepts of medical psychology.

In 1870, while visiting asylums in East Lothian, Browne was involved in a road accident which resulted in his resignation as Commissioner in Lunacy, and, later, in increasing problems with his eyesight. He may have been suffering some ophthalmic problems, probably glaucoma, from years earlier. Browne retired to his home in Dumfries and worked on a series of medico-literary projects, including the Religio Psycho-Medici (1877), in which he re-explored the territories of psychopathology and the religious outlook.

In 1839, Browne had initiated one of the first collections of art by mental patients in institutions, gathering a large amount of work which he had bound into three volumes, in many ways a forerunner of Hans Prinzhorn's Artistry of the Mentally Ill and the academic study of outsider art (art brut). A paper by Browne on Mad Artists was published in 1880 in the Journal of Psychological Medicine and Mental Pathology, setting out his views on mental illness and the effect it had on established artists. Browne's last years were clouded by the death of his wife in January 1882 and by his increasing blindness; but he lived to hear of his son's achievements in medical psychology rewarded by his election - in 1883 - as a Fellow of the Royal Society.