An Eighteenth Century Mad-Doctor: William Perfect of West Malling (review)

Despite its alluring title, Black’s cradle-to-grave account of the “Mad Doctor,” William Perfect, adds precious little to the burgeoning field of psychiatric history. Rather, the author succeeds only in resurrecting the memory of a once regionally well-known eighteenth-century figure.

In Part 1 of this small monograph, Black constructs a mere silhouette of West Malling’s William Perfect. More than the local surgeon, apothecary, man-midwife, and physician, readers encounter Perfect fashioning himself an amateur in poetic verse and political prose composition. Black selects a few tantalizing samples of his plain verse—much of which is sprinkled with medical imagery—drawn from contemporary periodicals including Martin’s Magazine, Mechell’s Political Chronicle, and the Westminster Journal as well as from his published collections, The Laurel Wreath (1766) and Poetic Effusions (1796). She also establishes the connections by which he became known to the local gentry in a professional capacity, but she concludes that it was through freemasonry, not medicine, that he achieved “his greatest social distinctions” (p. 39). Unfortunately, she shows no awareness of the expanding Masonic history literature, which could have helped her better contextualize her biographical subject.

The second half of the book superficially documents Perfect inoculating against smallpox, attending problematic pregnancies, and mollifying madness. Perfect left considerably detailed case studies of his practice in published works, including Methods of Cure, in Some Particular Cases of Insanity (1778) and Cases in Midwifery (1781–83). Although little use of this is made by Black, at least she draws readers’ attention to the wealth of primary case study material for future historians of madness and childbirth.

While Black is overly laudatory in her delivery, her faint image of the life and work of William Perfect will satiate the needs of many Kent county local historians and will palliate other readers until a more critical, analytic biography better contextualizes Perfect in his eighteenth-century English milieu.