| Book Reviews | The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 132.2

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| Book Reviews | The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 132.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Reviews

Founding Friends: Families, Staff, and Patients at the Friends Asylum in Early Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia. By Patricia D'Antonio. (Bethleham, PA: Lehigh University Press, 2006. 253 pp. Appendices, notes, bibliography, index. $46.50.)

Patricia D'Antonio has written a scholarly work that successfully negotiates the many threads required to understand fully the history of any institution. By carefully placing the Friends Asylum within its layered contexts of nineteenth-century Quakerism, early middle-class formation, nascent medical professionalism, and changing attitudes towards meanings of insanity, D'Antonio provides insight into all of these areas while also using them to illuminate the particular history of the Friends Asylum. The well-organized book traces the shift over time of the asylum from a re-created family for the insane to a medical institution predicated on the ascendancy of doctors as arbiters of treatment. The appendices provide detailed information on the founders, managers, and contributors, characteristics of the patient population, and the uses of seclusion and restraint as treatment methods. The bibliography and notes provide a wealth of additional information and identify sources for further study on any of the topics raised in the book.

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