last of the lunatics

John Cawte looks back in amazement to his years as a young doctor in an Australian madhouse. He now recognises the people he treated in the early 1950's as 'the last of the lunatics'. Miraculously, Cawte's case notes were saved from destruction. Rereading them after forty years, he was gripped by the horror they revealed and the questions they raised. Much has changed for the better. Many of the fearful illnesses he recorded have disappeared, treatments are vastly more effective and stigma has lessened. But his notes hold a surprising and challenging lesson - that temporary 'asylum' from the stresses of life is often all that a disturbed person needs for recovery.