Past Programs
Medical History - 2003
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Hearing Madness: The Soundscape of the Asylum
07/12/2003
This week, soundscapes of asylums past. Historian and musician Dr Dolly MacKinnon argues that the now abandoned psychiatric asylums give us a false impression of madness and its institutions as silent. Historians have all but ignored the asylum's acoustically rich heritage. From the use of sound to diagnose and categorise, to the conviviality of the asylum ball and the genre of the mad song - this week a journey into the noisy world of 19th Century bedlam.
Pox on the Brain
31/08/2003
Syphilis has been described as 'the disease that dare not speak its name'. Is this because it's so often been mistaken for other diseases, including measles, toxoplasmosis, manic-depression and schizophrenia? Or is it the case that this sneaky STD is the skeleton in the closet of some of our most famous writers, musicians and politicians - many of whom are thought to have created their greatest works under sufferance with syphilis? This week, All In The Mind explores the history, the cures and the people of this remerging disease. So pass the mercury-laced chocolates as Sue Clark investigates the plight of 'pox on the brain'.
Solitary Sex : A Cultural History of Masturbation
27/07/2003
Spanking the monkey? Dipping into the honeypot? This week, a cultural history of the world's most common solo sexual practice, masturbation. It's easy to do, and despite claims that we may go blind, is essentially harmless. The ancient world cared little about it, it was of no great concern to early Christian and Jewish teachings on sexuality, and yet at the dawn of the Enlightenment it became the cause of much moral and medical debate. Join us for an exploration of the why's and wherefore's of solitary sex.
Animal Spirits: The Mind in History
27/04/2003
Once 'animal spirits' were fluid beasts, distilled from blood, that roamed our nervous system and rummaged the pores of our brain. The patterns of their flow carried the contents of our thoughts and were the going explanation for vision, memory, imagination, belief, passion and desire. When animal spirits misbehaved or became polluted they could make us ill, in both body and soul. For most of this millennium Westerners firmly believed in these lively and impish carriers of our identity and they only disappeared after the nervous system was found to be electrical in nature. This week, philosopher John Sutton sets a few animal spirits free to explore the mind in history.
Summer Series 5: The Legacy of the Lobotomy
26/01/2003
The program explores the difficult legacy of the lobotomy. In the 1940's and 50's over 40,000 lobotomies were performed on Americans with the hope of curing sick and mad souls. Psychosurgery, operating on the brain to alleviate symptoms of extreme mental illness, has a controversial history. But things are very different today.
