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![]() ![]() The Library Company asked artist Tiffany Weiser to recreate the wallpaper of the title. The story was adopted by feminists and is now being made into a movie. Silas Weir Mitchell, who advocated recovery through the “absence of all possible use of brain and body.” He appears as an antagonist in “The Yellow Wallpaper,” an 1892 short story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, who fictionalized her personal experience as a patient of Mitchell, describing her powerlessness as a patient. Patients were often force-fed against their will and strictly confined to their beds for days or weeks. Women were often given the “rest cure,” which “Hidden Voices” describes as anything but. A lot of them were sent to asylums because they had differing religious views from those with their family, or they had financial issues and became a burden to their families.”Īt the Library Company exhibit ”Hearing Voices,” assistant curator Sophia Dahab describes the treatment of women at psychiatric institutions in the 19th century. “The women in this show, a lot of them were diagnosed with hysteria or something similar, if anything at all. They refer to things like monomania, moral insanity, hysteria. “Unfortunately the language that we use to describe mental illness has changed so much. Others were not so lucky, particularly women.ĭahab said diagnoses of mental health conditions were vague, at best, and sometimes entirely fabricated by doctors or family members. “The state-run institution, and then this smaller private retreat where he received wonderful care that ended up saving his life.” “It’s an interesting comparison to the treatment that he was receiving at McLean Asylum versus the Cutter retreat,” said Dahab. ![]() John Derby wrote about his experiences in ”Scenes in a Mad-House.” This illustration shows ”A furious Maniac rushing upon the Author.” (Emma Lee/WHYY) Nehemiah Cutter in the much more rural and remote town of Pepperell. He then moved to a private retreat run by Dr. “He ended up losing an election, couldn’t go back to his former job, and suffered some sort of mental breakdown which led to his treatment at McLean before being moved to a private retreat.”Īt McLean, in what is now Somerville, Massachusetts, Derby wrote about the sometimes disturbing behaviors of patients, including - but not identifying - himself, written in the third person. “John Derby was a politician who didn’t do very well in politics,” said assistant curator Sophia Dahab. One person for whom institutionalization worked was John Derby, who wrote about it in prose, “Scenes in a Mad-House,” and in poetry, “Musings of a Recluse.” The exhibition goes into detail about why asylums went wrong. Library Company curator Rachel D’Agostino describes how Native Americans were treated at the Canton Indian Insane Asylum in South Dakota. ![]() “By and large, things did not go according to plan and there were many reasons for that.” ![]() There were lovely, lovely asylums,” said D’Agostino. “When all of that went to plan, because there was enough funding and informed participants, it worked really well. In the mid-19th century the hospital built the Pennsylvania Asylum for the Insane, or Kirkbride’s Hospital, in what was then a largely undeveloped and verdant West Philadelphia. Benjamin Rush in Philadelphia, with the Pennsylvania Hospital. One of the pioneering doctors for moral treatment was Dr. Large-scale, public institutions designed for mental health treatment were first built in the 19th century, along with procedures such as the “moral treatment,” which involved fresh air, freedom of movement, and compassionate care. Many of the books sought to reform what was seen as a flawed system, with provocative titles: “15 Years in Hell,” “Eight and One-Half Years in Hell,” “Ten Years and Ten Months in Lunatic Asylums in Different States,” and “A Mad World and Its Inhabitants”. The exhibition ”Hearing Voices: Memoirs from the Margins of Mental Health” is based largely on first-person experiences written by people who underwent treatment inside 19th-century asylums. WHYY thanks our sponsors - become a WHYY sponsor ![]()
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