Alienists defend judgement in Lima’s asylum
In late-nineteenth-century Lima, a small alienist staff fought nuns’ administrative control and families’ incomplete certificates.
Source
In defence of medical judgement: medicalisation strategies in the daily life of the Lima Asylum in the last third of the 19th century
Inspect source passages
Alienists defend judgement in Lima’s asylum
These passages occur verbatim in the stored paper text. They support the points listed below; they do not verify every statement in the explanation.
In 1858 the first 45 Sisters of Charity arrived in Lima.
At the beginning of 1858, the first 45 Sisters of Charity arrived in Lima, taking over the administration of the main general hospitals of the capital
Nuns in the psychiatric hospital did not exceed 6 in the later nineteenth century.
During the second half of the nineteenth century, the number of nuns in the psychiatric hospital did not exceed six
What they did
Amaya Nuñez uses asylum regulations, Ulloa and Muñiz, and Charity inspector reports to track medicalisation in daily hospital life.
What they found
Sisters of Charity ran administration from 1858. Ulloa, ‘founder’ of Peruvian psychiatry, wanted colonial madhouses replaced. Overcrowding blocked moral isolation and threatened ‘contagion’ of paying patients by ‘free’ ones.
The limits
What it doesn't show
This is a Lima hospital-politics history, not a clinical outcome study of nineteenth-century Peruvian psychiatry.
Key terms
- Alienism
- Emerging mental-medicine specialty that claimed exclusive judgement over madness.
- Sisters of Charity
- Vicentinas who, from 1858, ran Lima hospital administration, order, and domestic labour.
- José Casimiro Ulloa
- Alienist who directed the Lima asylum until 1891 after studying European institutions.
- Medicalisation
- Positioning doctors as experts responsible for madness against nuns, families, and other physicians.
Flashcards
0 of 12 answers reviewed
Research intelligence for this paper
See its role on concept claims, tensions it is part of, placement history, and related discoveries.
Quiz yourself
In 1858 Lima hospitals were taken over by?
Common questions
Who ran daily order?
A handful of nuns overseeing guards, servants, and domestic staff.
What did families omit?
Medical records needed to judge insanity accurately.
Why infrastructure mattered?
Without isolation, moral treatment and class/race separation failed.
More on Hospitals