He came of distinguished stock. His father was Dr W A F Browne, 1805-1885, one of the pioneers of so-called moral treatment in psychiatry. He was superintendent of Montrose Asylum, published a famous book of lectures, What Asylums were, are, and ought to be, and on the strength of this was appointed to Crichton Royal, the new hospital at Dumfries, when it opened in 1839. His moral treatment was Carlylean – every hour had its appointed task. The patients had their own magazine – ‘The New Moon’; the hospital had a theatre where the first performance by the patients was Twelfth Night. Patient activities included gymnastics, singing, musical instruments, and language courses – in French, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic.

Crichton Royal,1847

Gradually it became apparent that despite all this the patients tended to become chronic and were unable to be discharged. They silted up, there was overcrowding, and by 1857 Browne was disillusioned. There was a new Scottish Lunacy Act in 1857, and Browne was appointed as one of the two commissioners to inspect hospitals. This he did for 13 years, combining his visits with lectures to the staff and students. In 1870 he was thrown from his carriage in Haddingtonshire, suffering severe head injuries which left him blind. He died at the age of seventy-nine.

Crichton-Browne’s mother was the daughter of Andrew Balfour, who had a hand in planning the Edinburgh Encyclopaedia, the forerunner of Britannica. She was well educated and loved literature, especially Burns, Scott and Shakespeare.

They had two sons – Sir James and J H Balfour-Browne, who became a distinguished KC, AS a young man Balfour-Browne published several novels, one dedicated to Carlyle, who advised him to 'devote himself to some real work.' He went on to write several standard legal texts, and to become the highest paid English Parliamentary barrister.

Crichton-Browne's godmother was Mrs Elizabeth Crichton, who gave her name both to the hospital and her godson.

Early Days

James was born at St Johns Hill ,Edinburgh –in the year that his father took up his post in Dumfries - and was raised and began his education there. He was a superior scholar both at Dumfries Academy and later at Trinity College Glenalmond. He began his medical studies at Edinburgh University aged 17 in 1857. Lister and Syme were among his teachers. He did well, and in his fourth year was elected president of the Royal Medical Society, that very ancient Edinburgh medical student society. His presidential and final address was on the need to study mental disease: ‘On the Clinical Teaching of Psychology’; and earlier he gave a paper on ‘The Psychical Diseases of Early Life’. In later life this interest would continue and become one of his preoccupations: the dangers of encouraging precocity in children, and especially of over-educating young women. Later he would regard the precocious Jane Carlyle as a prime example of these dangers. His thesis was on hallucinations, and he graduated M.D. in 1862, having early decided to pursue his father’s specialty. He spent a year studying in Paris.

In the next few years he worked for short periods as an assistant medical officer in asylums in Devon, Derby and Warwick, and in 1865 was appointed superintendent of Newcastle City asylum, where he also lectured at the Newcastle College. A year later he moved to Wakefield.

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