In 1839, William MacKinnon was appointed as the first resident Physician Superintendent of the Royal Edinburgh Asylum. Before his appointment, the care of patients was the responsibility of lay superintendents. MacKinnon is described by Margaret Sorbie Thompson as ‘a staunch, ardent advocate of moral therapy’^[1], which he defines himself as: ‘encouraging habits of self-control, in gently excising the faculties of the mind, in affording scope of the pursuit of useful employment and in gratifying innocent tastes.’^[2] To this end, MacKinnon believed that employment within the asylum should reflect (as closely as possible) the work conducted by the patient in the outside world. Furthermore, under MacKinnon the weekly balls at the asylum started, along with many other social events, sports and drama. 

As a result of his passion for moral therapy, MacKinnon established the Morningside Mirror as ‘a valuable means of affording occupation to some, and amusement to all.’^[3] MacKinnon’s instigation of the paper is displayed in the ‘Address’ of Vol 1, No.1 as it reads that the issue was ‘written in compliance with a request made to us by the Physician of the Establishment.’^[4] In the 1845 Physician’s Report McKinnon boasts that the Mirror ‘is in high favour of all without our domain [and]…in contributing to it some have been roused to exertion who were before listless and indolent.’^[5]

In terms of his academic career, MacKinnon did not publish medical discourse. MacKinnon became superintendent of the REA three years after graduating from the University of Edinburgh, with very limited experience in caring for the insane. Between his graduation and his death in 1846, MacKinnon offered more attention to the asylum itself than in contributing to the growing medical field of psychiatry. 

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[1] Margaret Sorbie Thompson, The Mad, the Bad and the Sad: Psychiatric care in the Royal Edinburgh Asylum (Morningside), 1813-1894, (PhD thesis: Boston University, 1984) p. 88. 

[2] Thompson, p. 88. 

[3] William MacKinnon, Annual Report of the Lunatic Asylum at Morningside(Edinburgh: Royal Edinburgh Asylum, 1845), p. 14. 

[4] ‘Address’, Morningside Mirror, 1.1 (1845), p. 1. 

[5] MacKinnon (1845), p. 14.