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‘Malaria Has Spoilt It’: Malaria, Neuropsychiatric Complications, and Insanity in ex-Servicemen in Post-First World War Britain

This article focuses on the cases of two British ex-servicemen who contracted malaria during or immediately after the First World War, were charged with murder in the 1920s, and pled insanity due to their malaria and long-term neuropsychiatric complications. One was found ‘guilty but insane’ and com...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autor principal: Fantauzzo, Justin
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Oxford University Press 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9949571/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36844658
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/shm/hkac036
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author Fantauzzo, Justin
author_facet Fantauzzo, Justin
author_sort Fantauzzo, Justin
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description This article focuses on the cases of two British ex-servicemen who contracted malaria during or immediately after the First World War, were charged with murder in the 1920s, and pled insanity due to their malaria and long-term neuropsychiatric complications. One was found ‘guilty but insane’ and committed to Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum in June 1923, while the other was convicted and hanged in July 1927. It argues that, at a time when the medical community sought out the causes of mental disease in the physical body, medico-legal arguments about malaria and insanity were received inconsistently by inter-war British courts. Class, education, social status, institutional support and the nature of the crime all mattered, as they had in the diagnoses, treatment and trials of other ex-servicemen with psychiatric illnesses.
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spelling pubmed-99495712023-02-24 ‘Malaria Has Spoilt It’: Malaria, Neuropsychiatric Complications, and Insanity in ex-Servicemen in Post-First World War Britain Fantauzzo, Justin Soc Hist Med Original Articles This article focuses on the cases of two British ex-servicemen who contracted malaria during or immediately after the First World War, were charged with murder in the 1920s, and pled insanity due to their malaria and long-term neuropsychiatric complications. One was found ‘guilty but insane’ and committed to Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum in June 1923, while the other was convicted and hanged in July 1927. It argues that, at a time when the medical community sought out the causes of mental disease in the physical body, medico-legal arguments about malaria and insanity were received inconsistently by inter-war British courts. Class, education, social status, institutional support and the nature of the crime all mattered, as they had in the diagnoses, treatment and trials of other ex-servicemen with psychiatric illnesses. Oxford University Press 2022-07-18 /pmc/articles/PMC9949571/ /pubmed/36844658 http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/shm/hkac036 Text en © The Author(s) 2022. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for the Social History of Medicine. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. For commercial re-use, please contact journals.permissions@oup.com
spellingShingle Original Articles
Fantauzzo, Justin
‘Malaria Has Spoilt It’: Malaria, Neuropsychiatric Complications, and Insanity in ex-Servicemen in Post-First World War Britain
title ‘Malaria Has Spoilt It’: Malaria, Neuropsychiatric Complications, and Insanity in ex-Servicemen in Post-First World War Britain
title_full ‘Malaria Has Spoilt It’: Malaria, Neuropsychiatric Complications, and Insanity in ex-Servicemen in Post-First World War Britain
title_fullStr ‘Malaria Has Spoilt It’: Malaria, Neuropsychiatric Complications, and Insanity in ex-Servicemen in Post-First World War Britain
title_full_unstemmed ‘Malaria Has Spoilt It’: Malaria, Neuropsychiatric Complications, and Insanity in ex-Servicemen in Post-First World War Britain
title_short ‘Malaria Has Spoilt It’: Malaria, Neuropsychiatric Complications, and Insanity in ex-Servicemen in Post-First World War Britain
title_sort ‘malaria has spoilt it’: malaria, neuropsychiatric complications, and insanity in ex-servicemen in post-first world war britain
topic Original Articles
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9949571/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36844658
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/shm/hkac036
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