A man diagnosed as suffering from melancholia with strong suicidal tendency. Lithograph, 1892, after a drawing by Alexander Johnston, 1837, for Sir Alexander Morison.

  • Johnston, Alexander, 1815-1891.
Date:
[1892]
Reference:
38639i
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view A man diagnosed as suffering from melancholia with strong suicidal tendency. Lithograph, 1892, after a drawing by Alexander Johnston, 1837, for Sir Alexander Morison.

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Credit

A man diagnosed as suffering from melancholia with strong suicidal tendency. Lithograph, 1892, after a drawing by Alexander Johnston, 1837, for Sir Alexander Morison. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). Source: Wellcome Collection.

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About this work

Description

A patient at Bethlem Hospital, Southwark, described in an inscription on the verso of Johnston's drawing as "Melancholy/propensity to suicide/Bethlem". Expanded in Morison's The physiognomy of mental diseases, 1840: "T.C., aged 50, has had a determined propensity to suicide, of long continuance - his insanity is believed to have been brought on by intemperance-he was formerly in very good circumstances."

Publication/Creation

[Edinburgh] : [publisher not identified], [1892] (Edin[bu]r[gh] : McLagan & Cumming Lith.)

Physical description

1 print : lithograph, on buff paper ; image 18.5 x 18.5 cm

Lettering

Melancholia with strong suicidal tendency. A.J. 1837

Reference

Wellcome Collection 38639i

Reproduction note

After a drawing in an album of portrait drawings presented to the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh in 1862 by Sir Alexander Morison (1779-1866), who inaugurated the formal teaching of psychiatry in Edinburgh in 1823. The drawings, which cover a period of over twenty years, were originally commissioned as illustrations to Morison's lectures on physiognomy as a method of psychological diagnosis. The earliest are probably the copies of drawings executed for Esquirol at the Salpêtrière asylum in Paris. In 1826, after a tour of the Paris asylums, Morison followed Esquirol's example by commissioning portraits of the insane from the miniaturist François Rochard (1798-1858). Morison resumed his commissions to Rochard in 1835, when he was appointed visiting physician to the Bethlem Hospital in London. From 1836 he employed the Scottish portrait and genre painter Alexander Johnston (1815-1891). A selection of Johnston's drawings, along with some by Rochard and copies from Esquirol, were engraved as illustrations to The physiognomy of mental diseases, 1840. About 1841 Morison began to employ Charles Gow, uncle of Andrew Carrick Gow, a Scottish portraitist, who continued to work for Morison throughout the 1840s and many of whose portraits were reproduced in Morison's Outlines of lectures, 1848 (information from the catalogue of the album, compiled by Helen Smailes, Scottish National Portrait Gallery, 1981)
After the drawing on fol. 125 of Morison's album

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