Moments of Unreason is the first detailed study of a private asylum in North America: the Homewood Retreat in Guelph, Ontario, established in 1883 as an early Canadian venture into corporate health care. Cheryl Krasnick Warsh studies the careers of its first two medical superintendents, Stephen Lett and Alfred Hobbs, which spanned the evolution of mental health theory from moral management to mental therapeutics and, later, neuro-psychiatry. This evolution did not make practical management of the Institute less complex: an under-paid, undertrained work force combined with an unruly patient population resulted in instances of neglect, abuse, and over-medication.

Cheryl Krasnick Warsh teaches history at Vancouver Island University and is the former editor-in-chief of the Canadian Bulletin of Medical History. A former Fulbright and Hannah Fellow, her books include Moments of Unreason: The Practice of Canadian Psychiatry and the Homewood Retreat, 1883–1923, Drink in Canada: Historical Essays, Children’s Health Issues in Historical Perspective (WLU Press, 2005), and Prescribed Norms: Women and Health in Canada and the United States since 1800.

Veronica Strong-Boag is a professor of women’s and gender studies and of educational studies at the University of British Columbia. She is a member of the Royal Society of Canada and a past president of the Canadian Historical Association. She has written widely on the history of Canadian women and children—including studies of the 1920s and 30s, the experience of post—WW II suburbia, Nellie L. McClung, E. Pauline Johnson, childhood disabilities, and modern neo-conservatism’s attack on women and children—and has won the John A. Macdonald Prize in Canadian History, the 2012 Canada Prize in the Social Sciences awarded by the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences and, with Carole Gerson, the Raymond Klibansky Prize in the Humanities. In 2012 Strong-Boag was awarded the Tyrrell Medal from the Royal Society of Canada for outstanding work in Canadian history. She is the author of Fostering Nation: Canada Confronts Its History of Childhood Disadvantage (WLU Press, 2010).

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"this [book] is a pioneering venture, and a very successful one at that ... its significance transcends the history of psychiatry in Canada itself, making ... a significant contribution to the study of the structure and dynamics of middle class family life in nineteenth century Ontario, and perhaps Canada." A.B. McKillop, Department of History, Carleton University. "makes a new contribution to the field ... the first detailed scholarly study of a private asylum in North America ... The author's methodology and scholarship are excellent and the sources used exhaustive." Terry Copp, Department of History, Wilfrid Laurier University.