46 Facts About James Crichton-Browne

Sir James Crichton-Browne FRS FRSE was a leading Scottish psychiatrist, neurologist and eugenicist.

James Crichton-Browne is known for studies on the relationship of mental illness to brain injury and for the development of public health policies in relation to mental health.

Browne, a prominent member of the Edinburgh Phrenological Society and, from 1838 until 1857, the superintendent of the Crichton Royal at Dumfries where Crichton-Browne spent much of his childhood.

James Crichton-Browne edited the highly influential West Riding Lunatic Asylum Medical Reports.

James Crichton-Browne based himself at the West Riding Lunatic Asylum in Wakefield from 1867 to 1875, and there he taught psychiatry to students from the nearby Leeds School of Medicine and, with David Ferrier, transformed the asylum into a world centre for neuropsychology.

James Crichton-Browne then served as Lord Chancellor's Visitor from 1875 till 1922.

James Crichton-Browne was a forceful advocate of eugenics, and in 1908 became the first president of the Eugenics Education Society.

In 1920, James Crichton-Browne delivered the first Maudsley Lecture to the Medico-Psychological Association in the course of which he outlined his recollections of Henry Maudsley; and in the last fifteen years of his life, he published seven volumes of reminiscences.

James Crichton-Browne was born in Edinburgh at the family home of his mother, Magdalene Howden Balfour.

James Crichton-Browne was the daughter of Dr Andrew Balfour and belonged to one of Scotland's foremost scientific families.

James Crichton-Browne spent much of his childhood at The Crichton Royal in Dumfries where his father was the medical superintendent from 1838 to 1857.

James Crichton-Browne went to school at Dumfries Academy and then, in line with his mother's episcopalian outlook, to Glenalmond College.

Shortly before his death, James Crichton-Browne wrote a valuable account of his Dumfries childhood, including the visit of the American asylum reformer Dorothea Lynde Dix.

James Crichton-Browne studied Medicine at Edinburgh University, qualifying as an MD in 1862 with a thesis on hallucinations.

James Crichton-Browne drew on the writings of the physicians Sir Andrew Halliday and Sir Henry Holland.

In 1863, he visited a number of asylums in Paris, and after working as assistant physician at asylums in Exeter, Warwick and Derby, and a brief period on Tyneside, James Crichton-Browne was appointed Physician-Superintendent of the West Riding Pauper Lunatic Asylum at Wakefield in 1866.

Ferrier's neurology: James Crichton-Browne spent almost ten years at the West Riding Asylum.

James Crichton-Browne supervised hundreds of post-mortem examinations of the brain and took a special interest in the clinical features of neurosyphilis.

In 1872, James Crichton-Browne developed his father's phrenological theories by inviting the Scottish neurologist David Ferrier to direct the asylum laboratories and to conduct studies on the cortical localization of cerebral functions.

Darwin's correspondence: At the instigation of Henry Maudsley, James Crichton-Browne corresponded with Charles Darwin from May 1869 until December 1875.

James Crichton-Browne seems to have mislaid the book for almost a year at the Wakefield asylum; but, on 6 June 1870, he returned it with considerable embarrassment, and enclosed the one photograph which Darwin used in his book.

Darwin explored a huge range of subjects with James Crichton-Browne, including references to Maudsley's Body and Mind, the psychology of blushing, the bristling of hair, the functions of the platysma muscle, and the clinical phenomena of bereavement and grief.

In 1875, James Crichton-Browne criticised the classification of mental disorders advocated by the Edinburgh psychiatrist David Skae which had been promoted by Skae's pupil Thomas Clouston ; Skae sought to associate specific kinds of mental illness with variously disordered bodily organs.

James Crichton-Browne described it as: "philosophically unsound, scientifically inaccurate and practically useless".

In 1879, James Crichton-Browne published his own considerations of the neuropathology of insanity making some detailed predictions about the morbid anatomy of the brain in cases of severe psychiatric disorder.

James Crichton-Browne proposed that, in the insane, the weight of the brain was reduced, that the lateral ventricles were enlarged, and that the burden of damage fell on the left cerebral hemisphere.

In 1875, James Crichton-Browne was appointed as Lord Chancellor's Medical Visitor in Lunacy, a position which involved the regular examination of wealthy Chancery patients throughout England and Wales.

James Crichton-Browne held this post until his retirement in 1922 and he combined it with the development of an extensive London consulting practice, becoming a familiar figure on the metropolitan medical scene.

James Crichton-Browne was a notable stylist and orator and he often combined this with a kind of couthy vernacular evocative of his Dumfries childhood.

James Crichton-Browne served as President of the Dumfriesshire and Galloway Natural History and Antiquarian Society from 1892 to 1896.

Sir James Crichton-Browne has given the technical name of "dreamy states" to these sudden invasions of vaguely reminiscent consciousness.

James Crichton-Browne follows it along the downward ladder, to insanity.

James Crichton-Browne was elected and re-elected President of the Sanitary Inspectors' Association on an unprecedented twenty occasions.

James Crichton-Browne greatly assisted the Association's negotiations with the Local Government Board in its attempts to secure the improved education and training of sanitary inspectors.

Four years later, on 29 February 1924, James Crichton-Browne gave the Ramsay Henderson Bequest Lecture in Edinburgh: The Story of the Brain.

However, James Crichton-Browne did not mention that his Henderson lecture was delivered a century after his father had joined the Edinburgh Phrenological Society.

James Crichton-Browne died, suffering from heart failure, in Dumfries on 31 January 1938.

James Crichton-Browne was predeceased by his son Colonel Harold Crichton-Browne.

Social Policy: Very early in his career, James Crichton-Browne stressed the importance of psychiatric disorders in childhood and, much later, he was to emphasise the distinction between organic and functional illness in the elderly.

James Crichton-Browne was considered an expert in many aspects of psychological medicine, public health and social reform.

James Crichton-Browne stressed the importance of the asymmetric lateralization of brain function in the development of language, and deplored the fads relating to ambidexterity advocated by Robert Baden-Powell.

James Crichton-Browne was critical of public education systems for their repetitive and fact-bound character, warning of mental exhaustion in otherwise happy and healthy children.

James Crichton-Browne advocated the fluoridation of human dietary intake in 1892, and recommended prenatal fluoride.

Retirement: In his later years, James Crichton-Browne enjoyed lengthy interludes at the Dumfries home which he had inherited from his father.

James Crichton-Browne was twice married and, like his mother, cherished a lifelong affection for the traditions of the Anglican liturgy; he was a loyal member of the congregation at the Church of St John the Evangelist, Dumfries.

James Crichton-Browne was elected a Fellow of The Royal Society in 1883 with posthumous support from Charles Darwin, and he was knighted in 1886.