Beliefs and Attitudes.

Mental illness was even less well understood than the physical sort in the eighteenth century. The medieval notion that insanity, or "distraction," was inflicted by God on account of the victim's or someone else's sins, died hard, especially when medical science offered little by way of explanation or cure. In the first century of English settlement the mentally ill were either humored or ignored if deemed harmless or shunned, restrained, or imprisoned if feared violent. Little attempt was made to understand the cause of the victim's condition (God's will could not be questioned), and even less effort was given to therapy. The stigma that mental illness carried with it meant that harsh discipline and corporal punishment were legitimate means to at least enforce obedience.

Problem of Treatment.

Enlightenment-era thinking demanded a more rational explanation for insanity than an...