Conolly Norman (12 March 1853 – 23 February 1908 [1] ) was an Irish alienist, or psychiatrist, of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He was the Resident Medical Superintendent of a number of district asylums, most notably Ireland's largest asylum, the Richmond District Lunatic Asylum, now known as St. Brendan's Hospital.
That fellow I was in the Ship with last night, said Buck Mulligan, says you have g.p.i. He's up in Dottyville with Conolly Norman. General Paralysis of the Insane.
— James Joyce, Ulysses [2]
Norman was born on 12 March 1853 at All Saints' Glebe, Newtown Cunningham, County Donegal, Ireland. The fifth child of six boys, his father, Hugh Norman, was the rector of All Saints' and later of Barnhill. [3] His family were prominent [4] and politically active in Derry with several members serving as mayor of Derry. Two members of his family were also elected to parliament. [1]
Educated at home due to his fragile health as a child, at the age of seventeen Norman began his medical studies at Trinity College, Dublin, the Carmichael Medical School, and the Richmond Surgical Hospital, gaining a M.D. [1] [5] In 1874 he became a licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons, a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1878 and a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in 1890. [3] [5]
After he graduated in 1874, Norman immediately took up a post as an assistant medical officer in the Monaghan District Lunatic Asylum. He remained in that post until 1880 when he joined the staff of the Bethlem Royal Hospital in London where he worked under the prominent English alienist Sir George Savage. [1] [4] Returning to Ireland in 1882 he was appointed the Resident Medical Superintendent of Castlebar District Lunatic Asylum in Co. Mayo. [1] [4] [5] He remained there until 1885 when he was appointed Resident Medical Superintendent of the Monaghan Asylum. [1] In 1886, he was appointed by the Lord Lieutenant as Resident Medical Superintendent to Ireland's largest asylum, the Richmond District Lunatic Asylum. [4] He would remain in this last post until his death in 1908 at the age of fifty-five.
While the Richmond asylum prior to Norman's arrival has been described as primitive and prisonlike [1] this is perhaps to overlook the international praise that his predecessor, John Lalor had received, particularly in regard to his educational initiatives in establishing a national school for the patients in the grounds of the hospital. [6] In any case, by 1904, Connolly could assert like a growing number of reforming alienists, that Emil Kraepelin's dementia praecox (a concept intimately linked with schizophrenia) was not incurable. [7]
Dementia praecox is a disused psychiatric diagnosis that originally designated a chronic, deteriorating psychotic disorder characterized by rapid cognitive disintegration, usually beginning in the late teens or early adulthood. Over the years, the term dementia praecox was gradually replaced by the term schizophrenia, which initially had a meaning that included what is today considered the autism spectrum.
Emil Wilhelm Georg Magnus Kraepelin was a German psychiatrist. H. J. Eysenck's Encyclopedia of Psychology identifies him as the founder of modern scientific psychiatry, psychopharmacology and psychiatric genetics.
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Grangegorman Development Agency is an agency of the Government of Ireland charged with redevelopment of the Grangegorman Urban Quarter, formerly within the curtilage of St. Brendan's Hospital. Grangegorman itself is an inner city area on the Northside of Dublin. Grangegorman, at 29 hectares, was the largest undeveloped site in the City of Dublin.
John Conolly was an English psychiatrist. He published the volume Indications of Insanity in 1830. In 1839, he was appointed resident physician to the Middlesex County Asylum where he introduced the principle of non-restraint into the treatment of the insane, which led to non-restraint became accepted practice throughout England. With colleagues he founded the 'Provincial Medical and Surgical Association', and founded the 'British and Foreign Medical Review, or, A Quarterly Journal of Practical Medicine'.
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The lunatic asylum or insane asylum was an early precursor of the modern psychiatric hospital.
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St. Brendan's Hospital was a psychiatric facility located in the north Dublin suburb of Grangegorman. It formed part of the mental health services of Dublin North East with its catchment area being North West Dublin. It is now the site of a modern mental health facility known as the "Phoenix Care Centre". Since the official opening of the Richmond Lunatic Asylum in 1815 the Grangegorman site has continuously provided institutional facilities for the reception of the mentally ill until the present day. As such the Phoenix Care Centre represents the continuation of the oldest public psychiatric facility in Ireland.
Grangegorman is an inner suburb on the northside of Dublin city, Ireland. The area is administered by Dublin City Council. It was best known for decades as the location of St Brendan's Hospital, which was the main psychiatric hospital serving the greater Dublin region. As of 2020, the area is the subject of a major redevelopment plan, running for more than a decade, under the aegis of the Grangegorman Development Agency, including the new Technological University Dublin campus.
Joseph Lalor was a pioneering Irish mental health administrator and a reforming superintendent of the Richmond District Asylum for 29 years (1857–1886).
George Alder Blumer, M.D. (1857-1940) was a physician, a mental hospital administrator, and a journal editor. He was a leader in the provision of humanitarian care for mental hospital patients.
Eleonora Lilian Fleury (1867–1960) sometimes known as Norah Fleury was the first woman to graduate in medicine from the Royal University of Ireland (1890). She was also the first woman member of the Medico Psychological Association, elected in 1894. After graduating medical school, she worked at the Homerton Fever Hospital in London for a year, and then worked at the Richmond Asylum in Ireland for 27 years, eventually becoming deputy medical director there. From 1921 until 1926 she worked at Portrane Asylum in Donabate, and then she retired. She was arrested in 1921 by Irish state forces for being involved in an assistance and escape program for anti-treaty prisoners which was centred on the asylum at Portrane. After she was released she returned to her work at the asylum.
Henry Devine was a British physician and psychiatrist.
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