Hugh Welch Diamond

Hugh Welch Diamond (Photo by Henry Peach Robinson , 1869)

Hugh Welch Diamond (* 1809 in Goudhurst , Kent ; † June 21, 1886 in Twickenham ) was a British psychiatrist and photographer . He is considered a pioneer of psychiatric photography .

Life

Youth and education

Hugh Welch Diamond was the eldest son of Batchelor Diamond, a doctor who had worked for the East India Company , and his wife Jane Welch. From 1820 his father ran a madhouse at what is now St Pancras Railway Station in London and the family lived on the upper floors of the building.

Little is known about Hugh Welch Diamond's education. He first attended a grammar school in Norwich and then decided to follow in his father's footsteps professionally. In that time there were in England three main options medicine to make a career: as a doctor (physician) with formal university education, as a surgeon (surgeon) , whose training similar to that of the craftsman took place, as well as pharmacists provide, medical advice and Was allowed to prescribe medication. Diamond initially appears to have completed a five-year apprenticeship in his father's mental institution. There is also evidence of a connection with St Bartholomew's Hospital in London, where he may have observed patients and occasionally attended lectures. An education at the Royal College of Surgeons from 1824 and the admission as their Fellow in 1834, which are mentioned in some biographical accounts, can neither be proven nor the acquisition of a doctorate at the University of Kiel . Nevertheless, by 1849 at the latest, he referred to himself as “Dr. Diamond ".

Professional work

In 1830 Diamond got a job as a pharmacist at the West Kent Infirmary and Dispensary in Maidstone , which earned him an annual income of £ 60. After his marriage to Jane Warwick in 1831, he opened a private practice in London's Soho Square. During the cholera - epidemic of 1832 he treated there ill. In the same year he was elected to the Board of Health of the City of London. In 1834 he became a member of the Royal College of Surgeons and in 1846 a Fellow of the Medical Society of London .

A private passion of Diamond was the acquisition of antiques , especially ceramics and art prints . In 1834 he was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London and began to study printing techniques more intensively. As a result, he turned to the still young art of photography. From 1845 he belonged to a circle of amateur photographers from upper social circles, which was initially known as the Calotype Society, later as the Photographic Club.

Diamond's professional interest shifted in the 1840s to the area of mental illness , the treatment of which had recently been reformed. From 1842 he studied psychiatry with Sir George Tuthill at the Bethlem Royal Hospital . In 1849 he was appointed head of the women's division of the Surrey County Lunatic Asylum in Tooting (now in the London Borough of Wandsworth ), where he remained until 1858. Diamond had applied for the apparently more lucrative position of head of the men's department the previous year, but did not receive it. In his new position, he oversaw the treatment of around 400 women, most of whom came from poor backgrounds. Although the institution was prescribed a progressive treatment of the patients, in which one relied on the healing effects of moral treatment , socialization and work, and Diamond himself was skeptical about the use of coercive means, cold baths, isolation cells and others were questionable in his sanatorium Methods of the time resorted to.

From the early 1850s, Diamond put his personal preference for photography at the service of his professional activity and began using photographs as an aid in diagnosing the mental illnesses of his patients. In the following years he published more than a dozen articles and contributions on photography, specializing in technical aspects and the use of photography for medical and general scientific as well as conservation purposes. In 1853 he was one of the founders of the Photographic Society of London and then became the driving force behind its Photographic Society Club, a debating club that met five times a year. A lecture on calotype that he gave to the Photographic Society in 1853 helped popularize the technique among amateur photographers of the upper class. In 1854 he was awarded an honorary title as official photographer of the Society of Antiquaries.

The Surrey County Lunatic Asylum's reputation suffered from a scandal after a patient died from cold baths in the asylum's men's section in 1856. Diamond was not directly involved, but he was accused of misconduct because he had not properly kept the heart removed from the deceased during the autopsy , although he contradicted the responsible head of the men's department when he said the patient's "fatty heart" was the cause of death ; the colleague was finally acquitted in a trial for manslaughter. As a result of these events, Diamond resigned from his position in 1858 and opened a private asylum for women called Twickenham House in Twickenham, Middlesex (now in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames ), which he ran until his death. Here he looked after a small number of female patients, who were apparently for the most part better off socially than the women he had previously treated. Perhaps this was also the reason why he gave up psychiatric photography, because the display of pictures of his private patients was out of the question.

Nonetheless, Diamond remained active in photographic circles in a variety of ways. He held various leading positions within the Photographic Society and from 1859 to 1869 published the Photographic Journal . From 1858 he headed two committees of the society, whose task was the documentation of the technical progress of photography and the investigation of questions about photographic copyright . He also earned services by successfully campaigning for the establishment of photographic collections in medical museums and schools. At the Paris World's Fair in 1867 , Diamond was a judge for photography. In the same year the Photographic Society awarded him their Medal of Excellence for his services to the medium. Hosting weekly meetings of friends who shared his passions for photography, antiques, art, or literature, he was valued for decades.

Hugh Welch Diamond died at Twickenham House on June 21, 1886, aged 77. After the death of his wife, he had been cared for by a daughter during the last years of his life.

Importance as a pioneer of psychiatric photography

A patient photographed by Diamond between 1850 and 1858

"Portrait of a Mentally Ill" (approx. 1852-1854)

Diamond is best known today for his pictures of - mostly female - patients that were taken during his time at the Surrey County Lunatic Asylum and for which he is considered the "father of clinical-psychiatric photography". In this context, Diamond's contact with Frederick Scott Archer , a previous patient from his time as a general practitioner, whom he himself had familiarized with photography, had serious consequences. At a meeting in 1850, Archer, who was developing the collodion wet plate at the time, explained to Diamond the main advantage of the wet plate technique, which was still unknown to the public, over the calotype, namely the shorter exposure time, which was useful for capturing animated subjects. In the early 1850s in particular, Diamond then used the new process to produce numerous images of patients, most of whom came from poorer social classes. In 1852, Diamond presented his photos at the Royal Society of Arts' first photography exhibition as part of a lecture entitled "Types of Insanity". The series of photographs is considered to be the first example of the systematic use of photography in the service of psychiatry. The psychiatrist John Connolly drew them in the drafting of influential case studies on " Physiognomy of Insanity" ("The Physiognomy of Insanity"), which were published in 1858/1859 as a series of articles in The Medical Times and Gazette . Since the printing techniques of the time did not yet permit the reproduction of photos, engravings were used for illustration, which Diamond's photos were supposed to reproduce true to the original.

In a lecture entitled "On the Application of Photography to the Physiognomic and Mental Phenomena of Insanity" to the Royal Society in 1856, Diamond demonstrated that photography could help psychiatry in three ways: First, it serves to hold on to special physiognomy of individual patients and thus help with the typology of various clinical pictures. Psychiatrists like Jean-Étienne Esquirol had previously used portrait drawings for this. On the other hand, the confrontation of the patient with their lifelike image could promote their self-knowledge about their condition and thus the desire for healing or their self-esteem. In addition, the photos made it easier to identify patients who had previously been treated upon readmission. Diamond's ideas were in line with the widespread belief of the time that photographs were inextricably linked with the scientific principle of the search for truth.

Diamond's recordings are by no means free of staging elements. Although the wet plate technique had shortened the exposure time, the subjects had to remain completely still for a minute or two. The poses they used for this are sometimes similar to those in portraits like those made by Diamond's friend Henry Peach Robinson . In some photos, Diamond also used props such as flower wreaths or animals to indicate the disease in question.

Larger collections of Diamond's photographs can be found in the holdings of the Royal Society of Medicine , the Norfolk Record Office and the Royal Photographic Society, which Diamond co-founded . Diamond's notes on the patients he photographed have not survived.

literature

• Adrienne Burrows, Iwan Schumacher: Doctor Diamond's portraits of the mentally ill. Translated from the English by Udo Rennert. Syndicate, Frankfurt am Main 1979, ISBN 3-8108-0088-0 .
• Sander L. Gilman: The Face of Madness. Hugh W. Diamond and the Origin of Psychiatric Photography. Brunner / Mazel, New York 1976, ISBN 0-8763-0132-4 .
• Richard Lansdown: Photographing Madness. In: History Today. Vol. 61, No. 9, September 2011, ISSN  0018-2753 , pp. 47-53.
• Sharrona Pearl: Through a Mediated Mirror. The Photographic Physiognomy of Dr. Hugh Welch Diamond. In: History of Photography , Vol. 33, No. 3, 2009, ISSN  0308-7298 , pp. 288-305.
• Kimberly Rhodes: Diamond, Hugh Welch (1809-1886). In: John Hannavy (Ed.): Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography. Taylor and Francis Group, New York 2008, ISBN 0-41597-235-3 , pp. 415-417.
• J. Tucker: Diamond, Hugh Welch (1809-1886). In: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004. http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/7583 , accessed January 14, 2012.

Web links

Commons : Hugh Welch Diamond  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k} J. Tucker: Diamond, Hugh Welch (1809–1886). In: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004. http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/7583 , accessed January 14, 2012.
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h} Richard Lansdown: Photographing Madness. In: History Today. Vol. 61, No. 9, September 2011, ISSN  0018-2753 , pp. 47-53.
3. ↑ Kimberly Rhodes: Diamond, Hugh Welch (1809-1886). In: John Hannavy (Ed.): Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography. Taylor and Francis Group, New York 2008, ISBN 0-41597-235-3 , pp. 415-417, here p. 416.
4. ↑ Rhodes: Diamond, Hugh Welch (1809-1886).
5. ↑ Rhodes: Diamond, Hugh Welch (1809-1886). Pp. 416-417.
6. ↑ In the original: "father of clinical psychiatric photography". Rhodes: Diamond, Hugh Welch (1809-1886). P. 415.
7. ↑ Rhodes: Diamond, Hugh Welch (1809-1886). Pp. 415-416.
8. ↑ Rhodes: Diamond, Hugh Welch (1809-1886). P. 415.
9. ↑ Rhodes: Diamond, Hugh Welch (1809-1886). P. 416.
10. ↑ Rhodes: Diamond, Hugh Welch (1809-1886). P. 415.