1819

Robert Gooch, one of London’s leading obstetric practitioners, coins term “puerperal insanity,” which was adopted by physicians, alienists, and asylum practice, where it was divided into categories of melancholia and mania. In many institutions, the diagnosis accounted for ca. 10% of female admissions by mid-century. Both upper-class women, “cushioned by wealth and luxury” and attended in childbirth by newly emergent male specialists, and poor women “debilitated by want and hardship” were deemed vulnerable to puerperal insanity (Marland, 79-80).