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Lunatic is a term referring to a person who is seen as mentally ill, dangerous, foolish, [1] [2] or crazy—conditions once attributed to "lunacy". The word derives from lunaticus meaning "of the moon" or "moonstruck".
The lunatic asylum, insane asylum or mental asylum was an institution where people with mental illness were confined. It was an early precursor of the modern psychiatric hospital . Modern psychiatric hospitals evolved from and eventually replaced the older lunatic asylum.
Walter Jackson Freeman II (November 14, 1895 – May 31, 1972) was an American physician who specialized in lobotomy. [1] Wanting to simplify lobotomies so that it could be carried out by psychiatrists in psychiatric hospitals, where there were often no operating rooms, surgeons, or anesthesia and limited budgets, Freeman invented a transorbital lobotomy procedure.
New York State Lunatic Asylum, Utica, 1878. The Legislature authorized its establishment in 1836. [7] [8] The original plans for the hospital included four identical buildings, set at right angles to one another with a central courtyard. Due to a lack of funds, construction was halted after the first building was completed. [4]
William Blake was an artisanal imagemaker dubbed a 'lunatic' during Britain's Industrial Revolution. The Getty Museum has other ideas in its new exhibition.
Voltaire quipped that the first half of Julie had been written in a brothel and the second half in a lunatic asylum. [258] In his Lettres sur La Nouvelle Heloise, written under a pseudonym, Voltaire criticized Rousseau's grammatical mistakes: Paris recognized Voltaire's hand and judged the patriarch to be bitten by jealousy. [257]
Anthony Ashley-Cooper, Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury was the head of the commission from its founding in 1845 until his death in 1885. [2] The Lunacy Commission was made up of eleven Metropolitan Commissioners: three medical, three legal and five laymen. [3]
A semi-official tract called the Praerogativa regis distinguished between the "natural born idiot" and the "lunatic". The latter term was applied to those with periods of mental disorder; deriving from either Roman mythology describing people "moonstruck" by the goddess Luna [49] or theories of an influence of the moon. [50] [51]