Bridging the gap by microscoping the mind: Mental anthropometry,experimental psychopathology,and the scientific ideal of psychiatry at the Eastern Illinois Hospital for the Insane,1870s–1910s
Restricted accessResearch articleFirst published online 2025
Bridging the gap by microscoping the mind: Mental anthropometry,experimental psychopathology,and the scientific ideal of psychiatry at the Eastern Illinois Hospital for the Insane,1870s–1910s
Drawing on heretofore overlooked archival documents and primary sources, this article reconstructs and contextualizes William O. Krohn’s psychological laboratory at the Eastern Illinois Hospital for the Insane in Kankakee between 1897 and 1899, the first of its kind to be established within a U.S. asylum. Situated against the backdrop of psychiatry’s public crisis of scientific legitimacy in the 1890s and Kankakee’s own history of political upheaval and administrative instability, Krohn’s laboratory represented an early, ambitious attempt to bridge institutional psychiatry and abnormal psychology through experimental psychopathology. Its brief history illuminates both the internal limitations of psychometric psychiatry and the structural and material constraints of the asylum as a site for scientific inquiry, especially when contrasted with the then-emerging psychopathic hospital.
AllikJ (2016) Why was Emil Kraepelin not recognized as a psychologist?Trames: A Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences20(4): 369–391.
2.
Anonymous (1893) Brief History of the Illinois Eastern Hospital for the Insane, Located at Kankakee, Illinois, 1877–1893. John Morris Company.
3.
Anonymous (1895) Northeastern Iowa Educational Association. The Journal of Education42: 388.
4.
Anonymous (1897) Notes and news. The American Journal of Psychology9: 135–136, 135.
5.
Anonymous (1898) Illinois Eastern Hospital for the insane, hospital. The American Journal of Insanity55(1): 366–368.
6.
Anonymous (1902) Machine politics in state hospitals in Illinois. The American Journal of Insanity59(2): 337–338.
7.
AraujoS (2016) Wundt and the Philosophical Foundations of Psychology: A Reappraisal. Springer.
8.
BardeenCR (1899) Scientific work in public institutions for the care of the insane. American Journal of Psychiatry55(3): 465–479.
9.
BatemanNSelbyP (1899) Historical Encyclopedia of Illinois and Knox County. Munsell Publishing Co.
10.
BenjaminL (2005) A history of clinical psychology as a profession in America (and a glimpse at its future). Annual Review of Clinical Psychology1(1): 1–30.
ChanningW (1894) Some remarks on the address delivered to the American Medico-Psychological Association, by S. Weir Mitchell, M.D., May 16, 1894. American Journal of Psychiatry51(2): 171–181.
13.
CowlesE (1898) Advanced professional work in hospitals for the insane. Proceedings of the National Conference of Charities and Correction25: 285–293.
14.
DeweyR (1892) Old and new ideas with regard to the work and the organization of institutions for the insane. The Chicago Medical Recorder2: 522–533.
15.
DeweyR (1896) Our association and our associates. Presidential address before the American Medico-Psychological Association at Boston, May 1896. American Journal of Insanity53: 193–213.
16.
DeweyR (1936) Recollections of Richard Dewey. University of Chicago Press.
17.
EngstromE (2004) Clinical Psychiatry in Imperial Germany: A History of Psychiatric Practice. Cornell University Press.
18.
EskridgeJT (1898) The mutual relations of the alienist and neurologist in the study of psychiatry and neurology. American Journal of Insanity55(2): 195–217.
19.
FierroC (2021) “A backdrop for psychotherapy”: Carl R. Rogers, psychological testing, and the psycho-educational clinic at Columbia University’s Teachers College (1924–1935). History of Psychology24(4): 323–349.
20.
GertyFJ (1937) In Memoriam–William G. Stearns. Archives of Neurology & Psychiatry38(5): 1122–1123.
21.
GreenC (2019) Psychology and Its Cities: A New History of Early American Psychology. Routledge.
22.
GrobG (1966) The State and the Mentally Ill. A History of Worcester State Hospital in Massachusetts, 1830–1920. University of North Carolina Press.
23.
GrobG (1983) Mental Illness and American Society, 1875–1940. Princeton University Press.
24.
GrobG (1994) The Mad Among Us: A History of the Care of America’s Mentally Ill. Harvard University Press.
25.
GrobGN (1985) The Inner World of American Psychiatry: 1890–1940. Selected Correspondence. Rutgers University Press.
26.
HaleNJr (1995) Freud and the Americans: The Beginnings of Psychoanalysis in the United States, 1876–1917. Oxford University Press.
27.
HauptEJ (2001) Laboratories for experimental psychology: Göttingen’s ascendancy over Leipzig in the 1890s. In: RieberWRRobinsonDK (eds) Wilhelm Wundt in History: The Making of a Scientific Psychology. Springer, pp.205–250.
28.
HrdličkaA (1896) A few words about anthropometry. American Journal of Insanity53: 521–533.
29.
JamesW (1892) A plea for psychology as a ‘natural science’. The Philosophical Review1(2): 146–153.
30.
JanssonÅ (2022) From melancholia to depression: disordered mood in nineteenth-century psychiatry. History of Psychiatry33(1): 47–64.
31.
KraepelinE (2005) The directions of psychiatric research. History of Psychiatry16(3): 350–364. (Original work published in 1887)
32.
KrohnWO (1892) Pseudo-chromesthesia, or the association of colors with words, letters and sounds. The American Journal of Psychology5(1): 20–41.
33.
KrohnWO (1894) Practical Lessons in Psychology. The Werner Company.
34.
KrohnWO (1898a) Laboratory psychology as applied to the study of insanity. The Psychiater1: 49–66.
35.
KrohnWO (1898b) Discussion of ‘practical methods in physiological chemistry’ by Richard H. Hutchings. Proceedings of the American Medico-Psychological Association44: 339–340.
36.
LambSD (2014) Pathologist of the Mind. Adolf Meyer and the Origins of American Psychiatry. Johns Hopkins University Press.
37.
LemkeAF (1898) Report of three cases of brain tumor with special reference to the pathology of neuroglioma and the psychical changes caused by brain tumors. The Psychiater1(1): 13–33.
38.
MartinSA (2007) Between Kraepelin and Freud: the integrative psychiatry of August Hoch. History of Psychiatry18(3): 275–299.
39.
MarxO (1993) Adolf Meyer and psychiatric training at the Phipps Clinic. An interview with Theodore Lidz. History of Psychiatry4 (1993): 245–269.
40.
McCornWA (1896) Degeneration in criminals as shown by the Bertillon System of Measurement and Photographs. American Journal of Psychiatry53(1): 47–56.
41.
MeyerA (1902a) Conditions for psychiatric research. The Medical News80: 465.
42.
MeyerA (1902b) Conditions for psychiatric research. Saint Louis Medical and Surgical Journal82: 326–327.
43.
MeyerA (1951) The problem of the public care of the insane. In: WintersEE (ed.) The Collected Papers of Adolf Meyer. Volume IV: Mental Hygiene. Johns Hopkins Press, pp.24–29. (Original work published in 1908.)
44.
MitchellSW (1894) Address before the fiftieth annual meeting of the American Medico-Psychological Association, held in Philadelphia, PA, May 16, 1894. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease21: 413–437.
45.
NeffIH (1899) Minutes of the sixth meeting of the Association of Assistant Physicians of Hospitals for the Insane. American Journal of Insanity55(3): 507–512.
46.
NelsonE (2019) Confusion about confusion: Édouard Toulouse’s dementia test, 1905–20. History of Psychiatry30(2): 189–204.
47.
PatrickH (1898) The points of distinction between cerebral syphilis and general paralysis of the Insane. New York Medical Journal68: 256–259, 293–298, 375–380, 403–408.
48.
PickrenW (1995) Psychologists and physicians in the Borderlands of Science, 1900–1942. PhD Dissertation, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL.
49.
PodstataV (1898) The early diagnosis of paretic dementia. The Psychiater1(1): 34–48.
50.
PodstataV (1901) The importance of blood analysis in general diagnosis. The Illinois Medical Journal3(2): 60–73.
51.
PopplestoneJAMcPhersonMW (1984) Pioneer psychology laboratories in clinical settings. In: BrozekJ (ed.) Explorations in the History of Psychology in the United States. Associated University Presses, pp.196–272.
52.
PressmanJD (1998) Last Resort: Psychosurgery and the Limits of Medicine. Cambridge University Press.
53.
RossD (1972) G. Stanley Hall: The Psychology as Prophet. University of Chicago Press.
54.
ScullA (2022) Desperate Remedies: Psychiatry’s Turbulent Quest to Cure Mental Illness. Harvard University Press.
55.
ShradyAGF (1897) A sign of progress in American psychiatry. Medical Record52: 743.
56.
StearnsW (1899) Recent phases in psychiatry. The Journal of the American Medical Association33(21): 1272–1275.
57.
StearnsWG (1896) A system of obtaining and recording anthropological data—(a part of the routine examination of patients on admission at the Illinois Eastern Hospital for the insane). American Journal of Insanity53: 254–261.
58.
StearnsWG (1897) The insane. The Charities Review6(4): 379.
59.
StearnsWG (1898a) Professional work in hospitals for the insane. The Psychiater1(1): 5–12.
60.
StearnsWG (1898b) Report of the committee on insanity. Proceedings of the National Conference of Charities and Correction25: 283–285.
61.
SummersM (2019) Madness in the City of Magnificent Intentions. Oxford University Press.
62.
van GiesonI (1898) Correlation of sciences in the investigation of nervous and mental diseases. Archives of Neurology and Psychopathology1: 25–262.
63.
WalkerJW (1896) A case of pyloric carcinoma and melancholia, with internal illusions. American Journal of Insanity53: 510–512.
64.
WeissKJ (2011) Asylum reform and the great comeuppance of 1894 – or was it? The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease199(9): 631–638.
65.
WintersEE (1966) Adolf Meyer’s two and a half years at Kankakee: May 1, 1893–November 1, 1895. Bulletin of the History of Medicine40(5): 441–458.
66.
WoolleyO (2019) On the Heels of Ignorance: Psychiatry and the Politics of Not Knowing. University of Chicago Press.
