InBedlam in the New World: A Mexican Madhouse in the Age of Enlightenment(UNC Press, 2022), Cristina Ramos tells us the story of Mexico city’s oldest public institution for the insane, theHospital de San Hipólito. This institution, founded in 1567, was the first mental hospital in the New World. Remarkable as this fact may be, this book is not simply about the singularity of this institution––though by placing this institution au pair with similar ones in the European context Ramos reframes traditional narratives in the history of psychiatry. What makes this book truly remarkable is that Ramos presents San Hipólitoas both a microcosm and a colonial laboratory of the Hispanic Enlightenment. According to Ramos, during the late eighteenth-century madness became understood in increasingly medical terms, andSan Hipólitoserved as a site of care, confinement, and knowledge production. Heeding the call of scholars who ask that histories of medicine take a more complex view of religion...