Pridmore Saxby
Discipline of Psychiatry, University of Tasmania, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia.
Australas Psychiatry. 2011 Oct;19(5):398-400. doi: 10.3109/10398562.2011.610463.
The aim of this study was to examine "The Madman and the Lethargist", by Samuel Coleridge, with respect to its contribution to the history of psychiatric disorders.
While primarily a political allegory, this poem indicates that to the non-medical Briton (Coleridge, albeit an educated one) of the late 18th century, a distinction was not necessarily made between mad and non-mad sick people. Also, that even dangerous mad people were considered potentially curable.
