Humane Animals: Moral Treatment and the Non-Human at York Retreat

This article sheds new light on the human-animal binary in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century psychiatry by considering the therapeutic uses of non-human animals during the early years of the York Retreat (1796-1813). By considering both figurative and "real" uses of non-human animals at the Retreat, I demonstrate how the figure of the animal in institutional discourse shifted towards primarily representing the patient's docility rather than unreason. The essay proceeds to show how shifts in the conceptualization of animality affected how medical practitioners and theorists engaged with the language of mental patients. Through a close reading of a patient's poem, I demonstrate how the patient's capacity for self-expression challenges the institutional hierarchies which were maintained through the human-animal division, as the poem ironizes the institutional desire to reproduce patients as "humane animals" which could be safely resocialized and reintroduced into society.