Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.
VMAD, the Venetian Mental Asylums Database' provides a key resource for exploring the suffering, conceptualisation and treatment of mental illness in nineteenth-century Italy, within a broad social, cultural, economic and medical context. It is the first Italian historical psychiatric data set to be published and it is hoped that it will allow comparison between the extensive work on 'insanity's archive' in the English-speaking world and Europe (particularly France and Germany) with the much less studied Italian experience. VMAD makes use of the records of the two chief asylums for the provinces of the Veneto: San Servolo (for men) and San Clemente (for women). It is based on the files which were kept for each patient and which record a wide range of information on standardised, printed forms: patient's name, place of birth and residence, age and sex, economic status, occupation, family members, nature of the illness and patient behaviour, length of stay, as well as all the stages of treatment and other interventions (dietary, pharmacological, surgical, etc.), and their impact, throughout the patient's stay, until the patient was either discharged or died in care. VMAD records one year in five, beginning with 1842 for the men (San Servolo) and in 1873 for the women (San Clemente, the year it opened), and ends in 1912. It records 5,701 admittances, corresponding to 4,261 different patients, of whom 2,492 men and 2,129 women. The preparation and publication of VMAD, by Egidio Priani and David Gentilcore, was undertaken as part of the Economic and Social Research Council research grant 'Rough Skin: Maize, Pellagra and Society in Italy, 1750-1930'.
Main Topics:
Patient records of the two Venetian insane asylums, for men and women, 1842-1912, providing complete information on admissions, personal data, diagnosis and treatment, and discharge
No sampling (total universe)
Transcription of existing materials
Compilation or synthesis of existing material
