Moonlight, Magnolias and Madness - by Peter McCandless (Paperback)

About the Book

Moonlight, Magnolias, and Madness: Insanity in South Carolina from the Colonial Period to the Progressive Era

Book Synopsis

Moonlight, Magnolias, and Madness is a social history of the perceptions and treatment of the mentally ill in South Carolina over two centuries. Examining insanity in both an institutional and a community context, Peter McCandless shows how policies and attitudes changed dramatically from the colonial era to the early twentieth century. He also sheds new light on the ways sectionalism and race affected the plight of the insane in a state whose fortunes worsened markedly after the Civil War. Antebellum asylum reformers in the state were inspired by many of the same ideals as their northern counterparts, such as therapeutic optimism and moral treatment. But McCandless shows that treatment ideologies in South Carolina, which had a majority black population, were complicated by the issue of race, and that blacks received markedly inferior care. By re-creating the different experiences of the insane--black and white, inside the asylum and within the community--McCandless highlights the importance of regional variation in the treatment of mental illness.

From the Back Cover

'Moonlight, Magnolias, & Madness' is a social history of the perceptions and treatment of the mentally ill in South Carolina over two centuries. Examining insanity in both an institutional and a community context, Peter McCandless show how policies and attitudes changed dramatically from the colonial era to the early twentieth century.

Review Quotes

Impressively researched and clearly written. . . . An important contribution to medical, social, and southern history.

Gerald N. Grob, Rutgers University

"Impressively researched and clearly written. . . . An important contribution to medical, social, and southern history.

Gerald N. Grob, Rutgers University"

Historians of medicine and science will find this study extremely useful.

"Isis"

McCandless provides a good picture of the attitudes toward and treatments of the insane.

"Choice"

The research upon which this book is based is exhaustive.

"Journal of the Behavioral Sciences"

Well-researched and engrossing.

"American Historical Review"

About the Author

Peter McCandless is professor of history at the College of Charleston.