Madness

   We usually go through life trying to figure out what goes inside of people's minds. "Madness: A Brief History" takes it one step further as Roy Porter goes through the history of the mentally insane, showing the reader's a glimpse into their minds. Porter however speaks of how the insane were viewed and treated beginning from the very ancient times to the developments of the twentieth century.
   One of the more interesting concepts in his book however, was that we still question, even after all of our modern medicine what madness truly is. He writes, " The figure of Folly may have also taken her bow, but the original riddle remains: is the world mad, is civilization itself psychopathogenic?...The issue is still alive." (Page 88). After all, there's melancholy poets who are considered mad and that is why their poetry is so alive. Then of course most every genius is pegged as insane, so really this book poses a question, are we all insane and do only a fraction of us have a grasp on reality, truth and greatness?

         I highly recommend this book for anyone who likes to question society and of course for those who are curious as to the history of things, because this book provides only the most pertinent and interesting things about the history of madness. I would also use this book in a classroom as an example of how ideas change over time, and how some treatments of the insane in the past were considered normal then and horrible/ridiculous in today's time; for ideas are ever changing.

- Timea Kernacova