The Air Loom Gang is a fascinating account of one man's unusual and ultimately tragic life during an age of great political, social and scientific upheaval. Matthews' incarceration at Bedlam occurred amid a fundamental shift in medicine, when doctors first began trying to diagnose and treat madness as a disease, rather than a moral failing or act of God (a movement triggered, in part, by the notorious madness of King George in the late 1780s).

The late 18th century was also political turning point, with millennia-old monarchies threatened by demands for representative government. Matthews, a London tea merchant, was an idealist and political dissenter who supported the republican revolution in France. He most certainly travelled to France as an emissary to the revolutionary government and tried to carry messages back to the English government -- a dangerous game to play even in England, where alarmed officials were clamping down on civil rights (with rhetoric uncomfortably reminiscent of 9/11).

In this vein, it's chilling to consider just how much of this first "clear-cut" scientific account of paranoid-schizophrenia was based upon erroneous assumptions. While James Tilley Matthews certainly suffered from delusions -- possibly even caused by the conditions at Bedlam -- author Mike Jay reveals him as a compelling, intelligent man striving to survive a nightmare. Imaginative, idealistic, and forward-thinking, Matthews might even, in another age, have been a science fiction writer....