The Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship at the University of Pretoria and the Consortium for Humanities Centres and Institutes (CHCI) based at the University of Wisconsin co-sponsored a colloquium, which aimed to bring together researchers working in the broad area of environmental humanities in Africa. The colloquium is part of an ongoing research of the African Observatory for Humanities for the Environment, based at the University of Pretoria.

Dr Rory du Plessis presented a paper at the colloquium titled “Mining extraction and environmental calamities recorded in the casebooks of the Grahamstown Lunatic Asylum, 1890–1910: a study of environmental history in South Africa”. The paper argues that the casebooks of the Grahamstown Lunatic Asylum contain not only clinical entries but also document how the mining industry and the various environmental calamities of the late nineteenth century had a bearing on an individual’s mental distress. In terms of mining, the casebooks are inundated with patients who were sent to the asylum from the diamond mine in Kimberley suffering from overwork, privation and mental anguish. Along these lines, the asylum’s casebooks provide evidence of how the mining industry engaged in labour practices that weighed heavily on the bodily and mental health of the miners, and eventually culminated in the onset of mental illness. In terms of environmental calamities, the casebooks illustrate how various droughts, and the rinderpest (cattle disease) epidemic of 1896–1898, featured as significant factors that brought on an individual’s attack of mental illness. Moreover, for the patients of the asylum, the lack of access to clean water contributed to the onset of contagious diseases that contributed to a substantial number of deaths. In sum, the paper aimed to identify and explore the casebooks of the asylum as an important resource for understanding how extraction economies and industries, as well as environmental disasters impacted on the mental and physical health of individuals in the late nineteenth century of South Africa.