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Cox’s chair: ‘a moral and a medical mean in the treatment of maniacs’

University of Dundeen.j.wade{at}dundee.ac.uk

U. Norrsell

Göteborg University

A. Presly

Two hundred years ago Joseph Cox published his book on the treatment of insanity. His novel technique was rotating the body in a specially designed chair. Initially modest and later extravagant claims were made for the therapeutic benefit of ‘Cox’s chair’. It was widely adopted in Europe in the first decades of the nineteenth century, but lost favour thereafter. Its benefits have proved to be scientific rather than medical because it was adopted by students of the senses to investigate vertigo; a century later it re-emerged as the Bárány chair for the clinical assessment of vestibular function. The legacy of Cox’s chair, and its related treatment of swinging, are to be found in funfairs throughout the world.

Key Words: asylums • history • human centrifuge • mania • psychiatry • vertigo

History of Psychiatry, Vol. 16, No. 1, 73-88 (2005)
DOI: 10.1177/0957154X05046093


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