In the early 1800s, physicians in asylums began to keep records of their patients, and pointed to heredity as the most important cause of ‘madness’. This led to doctors and state officials attempting to curb the reproduction of the insane amid high levels of anxiety in society. In this podcast, Theodore Porter talks to Raj Persaud about his book ‘Genetics in the Madhouse’, discussing the history of data collection and its important links with eugenics and studies of genetics.