Cruden's Times and Insanity

Postscript to my recent post on the life of Alexander Cruden (1699-1770).

We find it quite hard to imagine to imagine how people could found themselves so easily incarcerated in gaols or private asylums supposedly 'mad' or 'insane'. Julia Keay has an interesting comment on that fact.

She said that when one looks that earlier centuries that the mad and insane are treated quite differently from those unfortunates of the 18th century because in former times they were usually left alone.

When Robert Burton (1577-1640) wrote his justly famous Anatomy of Melancholy (1621) he took the view that melancholy was a complex phenomenon. For him it had physical, social, spiritual, biotic, mood and actions aspects to it. Burton saw melancholy (clinical depression) as related to sin and the devil but also realised that other matters contributed such as diet, fresh air, exercise, and amount of sleep. Burton also used the ancient idea of the four humours to explain depression: yellow bile, black bile, phlegm and blood with depression being said to be an excess of black bile.

However, for him as an Anglican theologian and scholar at Oxford, what was important was the Christian teaching regarding the Fall of man into sin. Others of the time even regarded lunatics as supernaturally gifted!

But with the coming dominance of the Age of Reason and later the Enlightenment a different paradigm of human history became prominent; within this paradigm Reason was exalted and anything that smacked of God's intervention or the devil's or any supernatural power was regarded as superstitions. All of life was understood to be open to rational scrutiny.

Hence, English society became more intolerant of its insane members and began to lock them away. Laws to permit these imprisonments were first enacted in England in 1714.

Indomitable Alexander Cruden

Have just written a piece on the famous Scot, Alexander Cruden (1699-1770) of Cruden's Complete Concordance fame for a Christian articles' website. He was born in Aberdeen and soon showed diligence and persistence in his studies.

It's been an adventure learning about this intrepid, diligent and badly abused man who was three times committed to 'mental asylums' in the 18th century in England and Scotland. Interestingly in each case a woman was central: the first two cases women involved with his wish to be married and the third case featured his sister. Significantly, he never married but it wasn't for the want of trying!

In the first case, just as he was about to be ordained to the ministry in the Aberdeen Presbyterian Church, he fell in love with Elizabeth Blackwell (according to Julia Keay, Cruden's biographer) who rejected him. He took this rejection very badly but he wasn't to know she was pregnant by her brother! (Cruden carefully guarded Elizabeth Blackwell's identity which compounded his problems later in life.)

In any case Cruden was tricked into being placed in prison for perhaps the best part of a year for his 'crime'. He then left Aberdeen for 45 years and didn't return until a year before his death.

He hadn't been brilliant like his academic brother but he was steady and determined so much so that he conceived the idea of creating a Complete Concordance for the Holy Scriptures. From 1725 he worked on the Concordance--while maintaining himself with tutoring and proof-reading--until the Concordance was published and presented to Queen Caroline (wife to George II). However within weeks of the presentation she died and with that Alexander lost an important supporter and patron. (This first edition had 2 1/2 million words in it and this was before the days of computers!)

He decided that he needed to marry a rich woman but was rejected by the one he picked. And if that wasn't bad enough his rival for her affections then got him stuck in a private asylum where he was subjected to the barbaric mercies of the mental health system of the day! They used strait-jackets, chains, manacles, handcuffs, blood-letting and 'physic' (medicine = opiates) to cure mental conditions at that time plus solitary confinement and very poor diets. If one weren't mentally disturbed before one went to such places then almost certainly a sustained and extended visit would induce mental and emotional imbalance.

Cruden was there just over 2 months but was very badly treated. However, his fighting spirit did not desert him and he sued his tormentors at law unfortunately losing because he had unwisely decided to include the doctor attending him as well. (His strategy in co-jointly a 'mad' doctor was unwise because such doctors were considered highly for being prepared to work with such undesirables.)

His third time in a mad house was for 17 days and happened at the instigation of his sister after a fight that he got into with soldiers who were swearing!

Cruden in fact oversaw the production of two more editions of his Concordance in his lifetime, the third edition just before he died. With the second one in 1761 (which was dedicated and presented to George III), he became financially secure for the first time in his life.

A lively biography by Julia Keay (HarperCollinsPublishers) appeared in 2004 arguing a strong case against the suggestion that Cruden was insane. That he was eccentric goes without saying but those who accused him of insanity always seemed to have ulterior motives that were to their direct benefit.