num_pages: 111
description: Photography is so essentially the Art of Truthand the representative of Truth in Artthat it would seem to be the essential means of reproducing all forms and structures of which science seeks for delineation . . . . We were therefore surprised in passing through the rooms of the Photographic Society lately to find so few photographs which had any bearing upon surgery medicine and the allied sciences. It is much to be regretted that the great resources of the Photographic Artseen here in a hundred beautiful formshave not yet been more fully applied to the purpose of our art.This complaint graced the pages of the January 1859 issue of the British medical journal Lancet. Unknown to the author of these sentiments but fully within his conception of photography many early amateur photographers had already turned their hobby towards the interests of science especially the medical arts. Photography in the England of 1859 no more than twenty years old was held to be the ultimate form of realistic portrayal. SANDER L. GILLMANToday the use of photography (and its extension video) in psychiatry is a common practice. But in the 1850's when pioneering medical photographer and psychiatrist Dr. Hugh W. Diamond took the 54 photographs assembled here for the first time this technique was an innovative application of art to science reflecting and expanding the contemporary interest in physiognomic characteristics.
language: English
title: The Face of Madness: Hugh W. Diamond and the Origin of Psychiatric Photography
publisher: Citadel Press