Psychology and More

The insane asylums in the 19th century were not so much hospitals as they were prisons with abysmal treatment. A new Project Gutenberg book, originally published in 1882, has a good description of the ways the inmates were treated. It also gives some good insights into the experience of the writer in discovering her own illness.

Diary Written in the Provincial Lunatic Asylum by Mary Huestis Pengilly – Project Gutenberg:

There is a Miss Short here–a fair-haired, nice-looking girl; she stands up and reads in the Testament as if she were in Sunday-school, recites poetry, and tries to play on the piano. I did not think her much out of order when she came, but she is now. She has grown steadily worse. Her father came to see her, and she cried to go home with him. I wished very much to tell him to take her home, but Mrs. Mills did not leave them, and I dared not speak to him. She has grown so much worse, she tears her dress off, so they have to put leather hand-cuffs on her wrists so tight they make her hands swell. I say, “Oh, Mrs. Mills, don’t you see they are too tight, her hands look ready to burst–purple with blood.” She paid no heed: “It does not hurt her any.” Yesterday she tied a canvas belt round her waist so tight that it made my heart ache to look at it. I am sure it would have stopped my breath in a short time; they tied her to the back of the seat with the ends of it.

Technorati Tags: abnormal psychology, Mental health