Guest Post: Neurology, the “Unconscious” and Victorian Psychiatry

The Bethlem Blog is run by the Bethlem Royal Hospital Archives and Museum to provide historical information on one of the world's oldest psychiatric hospitals, access to the Museum's art collection, and to contribute generally to the public understanding and destigmatisation of mental illness. This guest post discusses the work of one of the Hospital's Superintendents, Theophilus B. Hyslop (1863-1933).

The copy of Theo Hyslop’s 1895 publication, Mental Physiology in the Wellcome Library was, presumably, originally the doctor’s own, as it is interleaved with reviews, calling cards and letters to Hyslop from other mental health professionals, forming a fascinating archive in itself.

Mental Physiology was written mainly for the psychological part of Hyslop’s London M.D, which he completed while working as Assistant Medical Officer at Bethlem. Hyslop’s successor, William Stoddart, found it “strange” that the book never reached a second edition. [1] Perhaps Hyslop’s efforts to associate somatic and psychological theories of mental health and illness did not integrate easily with a growing divide between neurological and psychotherapeutic approaches. Nonetheless, Mental Physiology certainly shares similar evolutionary concerns with much British psychiatry of the period, in emphasising the importance of volition (or will) to both the individual and broader civilization, simultaneously associating mental ill-health with a loss of, or failure to attain, this self-control.

Hyslop was also heavily influenced by French neurology, much of which stemmed from the work of Jean-Martin Charcot at the Salpêtrière in Paris. Mental Physiology contains numerous references to the writings of Charcot’s pupils, such as Charles Féré and Pierre Janet. Janet is of particular note here: his calling card appears among the numerous psychiatrists’ cards pasted into the Wellcome Library's copy of Mental Physiology (from physicians across Europe and the United States), presumably received when they either visited Bethlem or attended a conference or meeting of the Medico-Psychological Association.

A letter from Janet to Hyslop, also included in the Wellcome's edition of Mental Physiology, would seem to be part of a longer correspondence between the two, for it discusses the symptoms, and treatment, of a particular individual, presumably known to both parties. Since Henri Ellenberger’s research into The Discovery of the Unconscious in 1970, Janet’s work has been regarded as important in the formation ‘dynamic psychiatry’ and psychotherapeutic techniques, through his explorations into repressed memory, multiple personality and the connections between past events and present trauma. [2] It is interesting to see here evidence of an established link between French and English psychiatry during a period in which, according to the traditional historical view, continental ideas had limited influence in England.

[1] Stoddart, W. H. B. 1933. “Obituary: Theophilus Bulkeley Hyslop, M.D., CM., M.R.C.P.E., F.R.S.E.”. Journal of Mental Science 79, no. 325: 424-426.

[2] Ellenberger, H. 1970. The Discovery of the Unconscious: the History and Evolution of Dynamic Psychiatry. New York: Basic Books.

This post also appears on the Bethlem Blog.

"Mental: a history of the madhouse" available again (briefly)

Mental: a history of the madhouse is "a documentary which tells the fascinating and poignant story of the closure of Britain's mental asylums". It was originally broadcast on 17 May 2010 and in July 2010 was discussed in a posting on the Wellcome Library blog.

The film is now once again available for UK viewers free of charge on the BBC iPlayer for a limited period (11-21 January 2011). The Wellcome Library offers free internet access, so anybody who does not have easy access to the internet and can visit the Wellcome Library may watch the film in the Library free of charge.

New family history sources for 2011

For anyone contemplating work on their family history, January the 1st is a significant day: not merely the day on which one resolves really to get down to it this year, but also the day on which, every year, a tranche of archive material previously closed under the Data Protection Act is opened up and made accessible. The January 1st openings affect all types of material, of course, but are particularly relevant to family historians since data relating to individuals is what the family historian needs but is also precisely the sort of material controlled most tightly by legislation. (Details of the way in which the Wellcome Library regulates access in the light of this legislation can be found on our website at http://library.wellcome.ac.uk/node159.html: see the first bullet point under Access.)

Several of the Wellcome Library items opened this January have particular relevance to family historians. The fullest information can be found in MS.5161, a casebook describing female patients admitted to the Holloway Sanatorium, Egham, in the early 1920s. As is usual with records of this type, there is a detailed description of the patient and her symptoms on admission and then a record of treatment in the hospital, sometimes over the course of many years.

From Ticehurst House Hospital in Sussex, whose archive is unparalleled as a record of a private mental hospital from the late eighteenth century to the mid-twentieth, comes MS.6277, a medical journal spanning the years 1905-1910. Unlike the previous item, this does not hold detailed treatment records for individual patients, but gives a day by day log of those patients to whom special circumstances applied at a given time – who was ill, who was being kept apart from the other patients for whatever reason, and so on.

Finally, of course, the Wellcome Library holds extensive records of the Wellcome Foundation, the pharmaceuticals firm through which Henry Wellcome made the money that was to endow the Library and the rest of the Wellcome Trust. Newly available this year is WF/CA/07, a series of staff index cards spanning the years from c.1898 to c.1933. These cards – formerly the contents of six wooden filing drawers – are arranged alphabetically by surname, making it easy to locate given individuals, and record name, staff number, age and date of birth, start and leave date, reasons for leaving, department and wages. They record staff overseas as well as in the UK and include staff at the Wellcome research laboratories. They are not, it appears, an absolutely complete record of all staff during those years – it seems that not all the index cards were retained – but they are an extensive and valuable resource for anyone whose family member(s) may have worked for Wellcome, whether at the London headquarters, the Beckenham research laboratories or as far afield as New South Wales.

Images, from top:
1/ Letters written to the King and Queen by a Holloway Sanatorium patient suffering from religious delusions, retained in MS.5161 next to her record.
2/ Wellcome Foundation staff cards, covering the name Burrows. Silas Burroughs, sadly, is not included.

Tick… Tick… Tick…

As the last hours of 2010 elapse, let’s look forwards to the new year. January is always significant for a repository that holds archive material: each new year brings the opening of new material to the public, material that was already catalogued but could not be made available because of its sensitivity. This is doubly significant for the Wellcome Library, of course, as we hold a large amount of material relating to the medical issues of named individuals, and this is a category of material that the UK’s Data Protection Act highlights as particularly sensitive and in need of careful handling. (Our access policy, setting out how we deal with this material and the demands placed by legislation, can be seen on our website at http://library.wellcome.ac.uk/node159.html: see the first bullet point under Access.)

Full details of the material newly-opened, of course, will have to wait until the new year! For the moment, although we cannot open the files for you, we can list the materials whose closure expires at midnight. Chief among them are papers from Churchill’s personal physician, Lord Moran; files on various rare conditions collected by the physician Donald Hunter during his many years at the Royal London Hospital; files on recipients of the Beit Memorial Fellowship; ledgers from two mental hospitals, the Holloway Sanatorium in Egham and Ticehurst House in Sussex; and some staff records from the Wellcome Foundation. The full list is below. Only a little while to go…

Lord Moran papers
PP/CMW/D.1/2: Minutes, 2nd-4th meeting, 22 Jul, 29-30 Dec 1949 and 17-18 Jan 1950; 1949-1950.
PP/CMW/D.1/3: Agendas and minutes, 5th-13th meeting; Jan-Dec 1950.
PP/CMW/D.2/1: Official lists of consultants and proposed awards (papers A3-A7, A12-A16); Jan-Feb 1950; Also lists of regional hospital boards, chairmen of medical committees of teaching hospitals and notes on grading of specialists.
PP/CMW/D.2/2: Further official lists of doctors and recommended awards with associated documents (papers A21-24, A28-29, A31-33); Feb-Mar 1950.
PP/CMW/D.2/3: Review of the Committee's Work up to June 1950' (Paper A35); Jun-50.
PP/CMW/D.6/1/2: Lists for London regions, some headed 'not on photostat list', surgeons (carbon typescript) with covering letter to selectors Jan 1950, paediatricians (carbon typescript), general medicine (carbon typescript), lists of surgeons (pencil manuscript, not Moran); c.1950.
PP/CMW/D.6/2: Schedules of consultants listed by speciality for Professional Assessment Committee; c.1949-1950.
PP/CMW/D.6/2/1: South East metropolitan region, with recommendations; c.1949-1950.
PP/CMW/D.6/2/2: South West metropolitan region, annotated by Moran with recommended grades; 1950.
PP/CMW/D.6/2/3: North West metropolitan region, Supplementary list, annotated by Moran with recommended grades; 1950. .
PP/CMW/D.6/3: 'Results of 1950 Voting'. Manuscript lists, annotated by Moran, for Birmingham, Bristol, East Anglia, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Oxford, Sheffield, Wales and London regions; 1950.
PP/CMW/D.6/4: Surgeons. Lists of recommendations by Association of Surgeons and Royal College of Surgeons; 1949-1950.
PP/CMW/D.6/5: Whole-time clinical teachers. Lists and manuscript notes by Moran; 1950.
PP/CMW/D.13/1: 1950 (?) Awards; 1945-1950.
PP/CMW/D.13/1/1: Bristol, Sheffield, North East, North West, South East Metropolitan Regions, Association of Surgeons (with partial index); 1949-1950.
PP/CMW/D.13/1/2: London Teaching Hospitals (with index); 1949-1950.
PP/CMW/D.13/1/3: 'Faculties', Anaesthetics, ENT, Orthopaedics, Radiology, Ophthalmology, Royal College of Surgeons and Royal College of Physicians recommendations. All areas; 1945-1950.
PP/CMW/K.5/1/1: Casablanca (1st Version, with Sir Desmond MacCarthy's comments), covering Jan-Feb 1943; c.1950.
PP/CMW/K.5/1/2: Untitled typescript, with Desmond MacCarthy's comments, covering Feb-Oct 1943; c.1950.
PP/CMW/K.5/1/3: Red Twinlock, revised version of Casablanca by CMW with comments and annotations by CMW, John Wilson and others. Covering Dec 1941-Feb 1945; c.1950.
PP/CMW/K.5/5/1: Mr Churchill's fall from Power, '1st typing, with Sir Desmond MacCarthy's comments'. Period covered Feb 1945-Dec 1947; c.1950.
PP/CMW/K.6/1/1: 'Mr Churchill's Fall from Power' (1945 period); c.1950.
PP/CMW/K.6/2: Early revisions of war-time volumes; c.1949-1950.

Donald Hunter papers
PP/HUN/C/1/2: Acromegaly; 1923-1937.
PP/HUN/C/1/16: Chloroma; 1913.
PP/HUN/C/1/38: Grave's disease; 1928-1929.
PP/HUN/C/1/66: Pigmentations; 1919-1937.

Beit Memorial Fellowships
SA/BMF/A.2/102 : Lythgoe, Richard James; 1926.
SA/BMF/A.2/103 : Burnet, Macfarlane Frank; 1926.
SA/BMF/A.2/104 : Frew, John Glover Hugo; 1926.
SA/BMF/A.2/105 : Goldblatt, Maurice Walter; 1926.
SA/BMF/A.2/107 : Stephens, John Gower; 1926.
SA/BMF/A.2/108 : Woolf, Barnet; 1926.

Mental After Care Association
SA/MAC/G.2/6: Case Agenda Books; Jul 1925-Dec 1926.

Wellcome Foundation records
WF/CA/07: Staff Index Cards; c1898-c1933; Contents of six wooden filing drawers, originating from a larger series, containing staff index cards, arranged alphabetically by surname. Cards record: name, staff number, age and date of birth, start and leave date, reasons for leaving, department and wages. These cards refer to staff overseas as well as in the UK and include staff at WPRL.
WF/CA/07/01: Brown - Carnay; c1898 - c1933.
WF/CA/07/02: Carnay - Cook; c1898 - c1933.
WF/CA/07/03: Cooke - Cooper; Hasleden - Hopkins; c1898 - c1933.
WF/CA/07/04: Horley - Huckstep; Hum - Judges; c1898 - c1933.
WF/CA/07/01/05: Judson - Ken[?y]ie; c1898 - c1933.
WF/CA/07/06: Mee - Narayen; c1898 - c1933.
WF/CA/07/07: Nash - Noye; Oakes - Pearson; c1898 - c1933.

Holloway Sanatorium
MS.5161: Females no. 28: Certified female patients admitted November 1924-October 1926; 1924-1926; Notes mainly by Elizabeth Casson and C Rutherford.

Ticehurst House
MS.6277: Medical journal; 1905-1910.

Image: detail from a computer graphic by Rowena Dugdale, depicting costs of long-term care: from Wellcome Images.

Asylum portraits

"Mental: a history of the madhouse" was a 60-minute television documentary in the BBC Four/Open University "Out of Mind" Season, broadcast in the UK in May 2010. [1] It told the story of the closure of Britain's mental asylums. To quote the press release, "In the post-war period, 150,000 people were hidden away in 120 of these vast Victorian institutions all across the country. Today, most mental patients, or service users as they are now called, live out in the community and the asylums have all but disappeared. Through powerful testimonies from patients, nurses and doctors, the film explores this seismic revolution and what it tells us about society's changing attitudes to mental illness over the last sixty years." Powerful? Overwhelming.

Among the interviewees were patients, members of medical and nursing staffs, the historian Dr Peter Barham, and Dr Henry Rollin FRCP FRCPsych, emeritus consultant psychiatrist at Horton Hospital, Epsom, and former Librarian of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. Dr Rollin described the grimly low levels of medical care in many of those asylums, and of care in general. Historic film footage of crude brain surgery was shown. Of prefrontal leucotomy Dr Rollin confessed "I had the misfortune to recommend sixteen patients [for the operation] ... it was of no benefit whatsoever, and some of them had the tragedy of personality change." It seemed at times that the only escape from the tyranny of routine lay in the menace of maltreatment. A former psychiatric nurse in Newcastle told of a difficult patient being dragged away and having a bucket of cold water being poured over him by a staff member who then jammed the bucket on the patient's head. A young woman who suffered panic attacks went to one asylum and ended up staying inside for thirty-three years.

As an illustration of a classic old-style asylum, the programme focused on High Royds near Leeds (illustration top), which had all the right qualifications: a Psycho-type silhouette at twilight, miles of corridors, once fine but now decayed Victorian decoration, the indispensable looming water-tower, and of course a proposal to turn it into luxury residences when it closed in 2003.

High Royds. Drawing by Paul Digby, 2003-4. Wellcome Library no. 643245i

The Wellcome Library has a large drawing made by an artist in High Royds in 2003-2004 as part of the ritual commemorations that were felt to be required at the time of its decommissioning. It looks like drawings done by patients to describe their gloomy life in the asylum. In fact, as film of the High Royds corridors showed, the drawing is merely an atmospheric representation of the actual interior in which patients spent their "empty and repetitive asylum life". There was a "quasi-prison atmosphere" (Dr Rollin again). The film-makers found articulate people who were able and willing to describe their experiences at High Royds and other asylums, whether as patients or as staff. These interviews are priceless.

The film-makers were careful not to make High Royds seem like a scapegoat: after describing episodes of brutality towards patients, the commentary stated that there was "no evidence of this kind of treatment at High Royds" which on the contrary was "in the forefront of the drugs revolution" in therapy. Some of the reminiscences on the High Royds website are quite complimentary, though others, it must be said, recall much unpleasantness. Other asylums in Newcastle, Sussex and Buckinghamshire also featured in the narrative, often with superb historic film footage.

The film showed the long process leading to the closure of the asylums. The first real "breaking point with the Victorian period" (Barham) was the 1959 Mental Health Act. Dame Pat Hornsby Smith MP called for "sympathy and understanding" to be the principles underlying treatment of the mentally ill. In 1961 Enoch Powell as Minister of Health 1960-1963 started a war on the asylums with a remarkable speech seizing on the image of the "looming water-tower and chimney combined" as the emblem of the asylum. Powell urged "the elimination of by far the greater part of this country's mental hospitals as they are today". He lost battles but won the war when Care in the Community was introduced. But Dr Rollin was no happier about the new arrangements than about the bad old days of the asylum. "The whole concept of Community Care is a disaster: I don't think the community cares" (NIMBYism was one of the problems he had in mind).

Mental illness is always with us, but individuals and institutions can be better than the film's account of what was offered in the asylum regime that Powell and others deplored. Last month I visited Bethlem Hospital to see an exhibition of a suite of portrait prints of patients and doctors at the Bethlem and Maudsley Hospitals in south London. Bethlem Royal Hospital is now in the London Borough of Bromley, and is approached by Monks Orchard Road, a leafy avenue with fine large houses down one side and the hospital's extensive grounds on the other, shielded by attractive woods and shrubberies. Inside the hospital grounds, as open as any ordinary hospital, one almost seems to be arriving at a National Trust country house: there's the chapel, there's the main house, where's the old stable block for cream teas?

On the other side of a meadow of wild flowers is a low building marked as The Bethlem Gallery, where the exhibition had been installed. (Note, behind the gallery, even here is the inevitable "looming" water-tower.) Most of the other people there are staff, and talking to them, it is striking how many of them are aware of the hospital's infamous history in formidable and less therapeutic buildings, first in Robert Hooke's palazzo in Finsbury (1676-1815: below left) and later in the building that now, shorn of its wings, houses the Imperial War Museum (1815-1930: below right). They appreciate the present environment of the hospital, and it is hard to believe the patients do not do so too, at least those in convalescent mode.

Two views of Bethlem: above left, drawing by Thomas Rowlandson, 1789; above right, coloured aquatint, 1817. Wellcome Library nos. 536228i and 39200i.

Access to the Gallery and to occupational art-activities is provided. The portraits on show in the Gallery are colour etchings by Gemma Anderson, a talented artist from Northern Ireland who trained in printmaking in London at the Royal College of Art. The artist is present (right), and it is touching to see her talking to a former patient, "Frederick", who sat to her for his portrait (below). In the clear light of the white-walled gallery, the etchings are beautifully exhibited in frames, each one a finely wrought tribute to an individual person.


So striking are the portraits, and so unusual, that the Wellcome Library has bought the sixteen prints that form the complete set Portraits: patients and psychiatrists. They mark a new step in psychiatric portraiture that mirrors the transition from the closed asylums of the past to the hope for a better present and future. They deserve a notice of their own, if not more than one: watch this space.

[1] Director: Chris Boulding. Producer: Adam Jessel. Executive Producer: Denys Blakeway. Archive Researcher: Peter Scott, for Blakeway Productions. No longer available on television but the Wellcome Library has a DVD of it.

Wellcome Library Insight - Madness

This week's free Wellcome Library Insight session - on Thursday 20th May - explores changing ideas about mental illness, 'madness' and its treatment, through material from the Wellcome Library's collections.

Our Insight sessions offer visitors to the Wellcome Library an opportunity to explore the variety of our holdings. Sessions are thematic in style, last around an hour and offer a chance to learn about our collections from a member of Library staff.

The session starts at 3.00pm and tickets are available from the Wellcome Collection Information Desk from 1.30pm onwards. For more details, see the Wellcome Collection website.

Exploring Wellcome Collection: A Social History of Madness in Europe

What did it mean to suffer mental health problems in the past? How was madness understood and how were patients treated? Drawing on the rich holdings both in the Library and Wellcome Collection, this short course looks at the history of madness in Europe.

Operated in conjunction with our colleagues at Birkbeck College, the course will focus on different ways of classifying and treating insanity, as well as looking at the difference that gender and class made to treatment and diagnosis.

Topics explored include madness in medieval and early modern Europe; 'moral treatment' in the eighteenth century; the asylum age; hysteria and neurasthenia, degeneration and mental deficiency. This module also includes a special case study on alcoholism and madness.

More details can be found on the Birkbeck website.

Addicted artists and the corridors of power: archive material opened January 2010

Sherlock Holmes took his bottle from the corner of the mantel-piece, and his hypodermic syringe from its neat morocco case. With his long, white, nervous fingers he adjusted the delicate needle, and rolled back his left shirt-cuff. For some little time his eyes rested thoughtfully upon the sinewy forearm and wrist, all dotted and scarred with innumerable puncture marks. Finally, he thrust the sharp point home, pressed down the tiny piston, and sank back…
(Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Sign of Four: opening words)

Every year, at the start of January, the Wellcome Library opens various archive items to the public that have been closed under the Data Protection Act until this point. As usual, this year’s collection of expired closures is widely varied, the subjects spanning madness, animal experimentation, the skin pigmentation disorder Argyria, and the discussions of Allied leaders during World War II. The items’ formats include patient records, personal diary notes, fellowship applications and organisational subject files. But what do any of these have to do with the opening words of The Sign of Four, possibly the best-known depiction of drug use in English literature until Trainspotting came along?

Among the items opened are several from the Manor House asylum, a private mental hospital located in Chiswick House, south-west London, some of whose papers are held at the Wellcome Library. MS.6224 comprises a volume of case notes for male patients in the years 1906-1925. The very first case provides our link. The patient, Charles Henry Malcolm Kerr, is an artist aged 48 who arrived at Chiswick in 1906. The doctor examining him on admission takes up the story:

"He is described as being normally rather reserved, and has done some good work painting, his portraits having been accepted by the Academy…. Broke down last spring and became irritable & excitable. Taken by Dr Lord to his "home" at Hampstead, then began to smash things, & threaten, and evidently in a condition of absolute insane excitement, was certified & sent to the Priory."

From the Priory Kerr was transferred to Chiswick. What his problems were may perhaps be indicated by the following undated note inserted between the pages of the newly-opened casebook:

"Dear Dr Tuke,
I wish I c[oul]d have some more brandy: it is like being in prison to be deprived like this of ordinary necessities.
C.K.
Also if you c[oul]d lend me a hypodermic syringe I s[houl]d be very much obliged."

Another note sheds light on the syringe:

"Dear Dr Tuke
Last night, the morphia bottle was not found in my room: so Mr [illegible] refused to give me a dose at all: this, I regard as the most monstrous piece of insolence in a paid [illegible] I have ever heard of: but not by any means the only bit of impertinence I have been subject to.
The morphia you have given me has had no effect at all. Mr Savage said definitely that I was to have it in doses strong enough to have some effect. I have told you over and over again that I have to take morphia in larger doses than people who are not accustomed to it: but you never attend to anything I say.
C.K"

Finally, another undated note suggests possible withdrawal symptoms:

"Sir
For heaven's sake send me some brandy or something, I never felt so ill in my life. If I had been at my own home I c[oul]d have put myself right hours ago.
C.K"

But the link to Sherlock Holmes? Although the doctor making notes on Kerr’s admission concentrates on his portrait work, Kerr was also a book illustrator of some note, providing pictures for works by Rider Haggard, Robert Louis Stevenson – and Conan Doyle. In fact, when The Sign of Four, with its vivid opening depicting intravenous drug use, was published in 1890, it was with illustrations by Charles H.M. Kerr.

Holmes’s drug of choice is said to be cocaine rather than the morphia Kerr uses, but Doyle does make a reference to “the drowsiness of the drug” when talking of cocaine use in a way that suggests this is one of his notorious errors of detail and that, at least sometimes, Holmes should be seen as taking morphia. Does art imitate life in this case, or life imitate art? Did the illustrator work on a text describing a dependency he knew only too well, or only later fall victim to the same addiction? The case-notes await work that would flesh this out.

What is only too clear is that the two addicts had different fates: Holmes, famously, is weaned off his drug-use by Watson, but Kerr has a less happy end. On September 8th 1906 he leaves the Manor House for his wife’s care, noted as "Discharged ‘Relieved’", but a note below this comments "Died at Burgess Hill, December 1907", a little over a year later.

Elsewhere in the papers newly open, we find a notebook by Winston Churchill’s physician Lord Moran, containing observations on many topics including Churchill’s character and oratory, and the meetings of Allied leaders. In February 1945 he accompanies Churchill to the meeting of Allied leaders at Yalta and comments on Franklin D. Roosevelt’s poor health:

There was a good deal of talk last night about the afternoon Conference at the President's house. Everyone thought he had gone to bits physically and there was much speculation ab[ou]t the cause. It was at [illegible] that I first realized there was something wrong and that he was losing weight. Now anyone can see that he is a very sick man. It is not only his physical deterioration that they notice. He intervened in the discussion very little, his mouth dropped and he seemed to have little grip on things. He has al[wa]ys been short of knowledge about the subject under discussion but his shrewdness as covered this up to the present. Now, they say, the shrewdness is gone and there is nothing left.
Stalin doesn't seem to be taking advantage of the new situation…
Cadogan [Sir Alexander George Montagu Cadogan (1884-1968), permanent under-secretary at the Foreign Office] told me he did not think Stalin liked the PM's theatrical style. He had noticed him looking at Winston when he was making gestures with tears in his eyes. I wonder if this only means Cadogan himself doesn't like this particular style of oratory…"
(PP/CMW/K.4/2)

This is one of only three items from the Moran papers to be opened this year, but these few are the prelude of a long series to come: January 2011 will see twenty-one items from that collection newly opened. Fascinating revelations can be expected.

From addicted artists to the corridors of power: the full varied list of items newly opened is given below. Readers are warmly invited to visit the Library and enjoy the sensation of being among the first people to read these papers for decades.

MS.6224 Manor House asylum: case notes, male patients (surnames A-K only), 1906-1925
MS.6226 Manor House asylum: case notes, female patients (surnames L-Z only), 1906-1925
MS.6334 Ticehurst House hospital: patient Certificates and Notices: Admission dates 1905-1909.
MSS.6347-6348 Ticehurst House hospital: Margaret Georgina Finch patient file (2 parts)
MS.6788 Ticehurst House hospital: Photograph Album
PP/CMW/D.6/1/1 Lord Moran papers: notes on London teaching hospitals and metropolitan regions
PP/CMW/D.6/1/3 Lord Moran papers: notes on teaching hospitals in the provinces
PP/CMW/K.4/2 Lord Moran papers: notebook containing miscellaneous observations on Winston Churchill character, oratory, meeting Stalin, Teheran, 1943
PP/HUN/C/1/7 Donald Hunter papers: Argyria
PP/RAS/D.41/3 Hugo Rast papers: patient file, Wladimir Wolkoff
SA/BMF/A.2/95-98, 100, 106 Beit Memorial Fellowship records. Files on: Eagles, George Hardy; Needham, Dorothy May; Chamberlain, Ernest Noble; Allott, Eric Newmarch; Denny-Brown, Derek Ernest; Irvine, James Tutin
SA/BRA/C.1/3/1 Brain Research Association papers: response to the 1979 Protection of Animals (Scientific Purposes) Bill and the 1979 Laboratory Animals Protection Bill (Includes papers from the Committee for the Reform of Animal Experimentation, The Physiological Society, the Research Defence Society, The Royal Society, and the Universities Federation for Animal Welfare)
SA/MAC/G.1/1 Mental Aftercare Association records: Registers
SA/MAC/G.2/5 Mental Aftercare Association records: Case Agenda Books
SA/RDS/J/12/3-9 Research Defence Society: files relating to the 1979 Protection of Animals (Scientific Purposes) Bill
SA/RDS/J/17 Research Defence Society: correspondence, 1980

All are described in the Archives and Manuscripts catalogue: simply search on the reference given at the start of each entry.

Illustrations: the upper illustration shows the first page of The Sign of Four. The lower shows Lord Moran aboard a ship.