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This likable book on the first 125 years of Fulbourn Hospital, Cambridge, is partly the history of a typical English county asylum. It is also an autobiographical account by the last Medical Superintendent of the pioneering work he did there from 1952 until 1983. Many, though perhaps not all, of those who know David Clark and worked with him at Fulbourn Hospital will be delighted to see his book. They will search the excellent index, and riffle through the pages, looking for famous stories and characters. They will not be disappointed.
In an interesting Foreword, Roy Porter points out how surprisingly rare it has been for the psychiatrists involved in running such hospitals in this century to write about their experiences. By contrast, in the nineteenth century, ‘their Victorian precursors seem to have been vocal on the subject to the point of garrulity’. In his first two chapters, Clark plunders to good effect such descriptions, as well as local newspaper reports and the yearly comments of the Lunacy Commissioners, as he tells the story of Fulbourn Hospital's first hundred years.
The Lunacy Act of 1845 required each county to provide accommodation for pauper lunatics, and so in 1858 the building was opened, some three miles south-west of Cambridge. The ups-and-downs of the early years of the Hospital are described with the lively touch and the telling details of the social historian who has