At the turn of the twentieth century, hundreds of Christian Scientists, including their founder Mary Baker Eddy, were charged with insanity owing to their religion. As a new religion, Christian Science became part of the medically-sanctioned etiology of insanity at the time. Newspapers were swift to pathologize Eddy and the members of her church thus justifying their institutionalization. Their stories were manufactured into tabloid sensations that depicted Christian Scientists in a variety of denigrating frameworks such as murderer, family-disrupter, and subverter of gender roles. Superintendents of insane asylums served as expert witnesses in trials where they were utilized by both the defense and prosecution to demonstrate the scientific credibility of belief in Christian Science as a precipitator of insanity. The proposed paper examines how turn of the century American politics of religion and medical science intertwined to construct Christian Science as a cause of insanity. I draw not only from medical sources such as scientific journals and medical conference proceedings, but popular coverage of emerging tropes of madness in connection with religion. To focus my discussion, I employ historical media coverage of two trials in which Christian Scientist defendants were adjudged both sane and insane by physicians. In both of these cases, the female defendant's mental capacity was questioned owing to their religious identity. I argue that historical charges of insanity levied against members of Christian Science reveal complex tensions concerning the historical negotiation of faith within medical discourse.

Ayurveda, an Indian traditional medical system is an all-embracing system of medical teachings which encompasses a number of different historical lines and layers. The term āyurveda means, literally, “the knowledge or science (Sanskrit veda) for longevity (āyus)”. There are eight branches of āyurveda. One of the divisions of āyurveda is called bhūtavidyā (studies of disorders or possessions). This paper argues that a characteristic of Indian traditional medicine, āyurveda covers important aspects of psychiatry even though like other traditional and ancients of medicine there is the absence of a distinct discipline that is comparable with psychiatry as it has developed in Western medicine. What are those indicating factors that show the characteristics of psychiatry in āyurveda? Is there any religious connotation in those characteristics? These are the major dealing matters in my paper. Keywords: Ayurveda, psychiatry, religion, possessions, traditional

The prominence of disability advocacy grew significantly after 1980. While research, assessment, and therapies for mental retardation and related developmental disabilities were traditionally in the realm of specialist psychologists, burgeoning advocacy organizations began challenging the classifications and interventions of these experts. This included calls by advocacy organizations like the American Association for Mental Retardation (AAMR) for research on aversive forms of behavior modification—involving electric shocks and other punishments—to be banned. In 1992, AAMR also significantly revised its longstanding and highly influential Manual on Mental Retardation, shifting its focus for classification away from individual impairments and toward societal supports. Some psychologists who specialized in developmental disabilities pushed back, calling these policies and revisions “postmodern,” “politically correct,” and anti-science. They defended scientific research and evidence-based care, framing their approaches as advocating for people with disabilities’ right to scientific knowledge and effective treatments. Advocates countered by arguing that reframing disability as a social issue was not an attack on science. The identity of developmental disability specialists as either primarily scientific or social problems-oriented was central to these debates. Sociologist Sydney Halpern has argued that clinical specialties associated with scientific innovation have greater prestige than those who address social problems. Building on the work of Halpern, as well as historians of psychology Jill Morawski and Deborah Coon, I argue that these specialist psychologists, who defended their approaches as scientific, sought to maintain their central role in developmental disabilities research and support, while enhancing the status of a historically low prestige field.