the most famous and notorious insane asylums in history

7/30/2019 The Most Famous and Notorious Insane Asylums in History

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The Most Famous andNotorious Insane Asylums in

History HealthWeird StuffWeird

Before 1844, the mentally ill were stashed away in prisons and thebasements of public buildings. But in the middle of the 19th century,

reformers like Dorothea Dix pushed to improve the standing of those withserious mental illness, an effort that led to the construction of sprawlingpsychiatric hospitals with names like the State Lunatic Hospital at Danversand the Athens Lunatic Asylum.

Many of these new facilities were built underthe Kirkbride Plan, anarchitectural guideline which ensured the maximum amount of privacy andcomfort for the patients. However the concept of "building as treatment"soon fell out of favor, and most American mental asylums becameovercrowded Gothic palaces of abuse and neglect.

In the latter half of the 20th century, the invention of anti-psychotic drugslike Thorazine triggered a movement toward "deinstitutionalization" -- somuch so that by the year 2000 almost all of the Kirkbride buildings had

been abandoned or downsized. The shells of the grand structures, and talesof the horrors they housed, still remain. Read on to check them out.

Danvers State Hospital
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Built in 1878 to house 500, Danvers State Hospital (formally known theState Lunatic Hospital at Danvers) had over 2,300 patients at its peak inthe 1940s. Needless to say, conditions were hellish. Danvers is the rumored

birthplace of the lobotomy, and doctors used that barbaric procedure, aswell as electroshock therapy, to the keep the inmates in line.

The facility closed in 1992, but a plan to turn the building into condosstalled when it promptly burned down. The structure's cursed historyshouldn't be that much of a surprise: It was built on plot of land onceowned by John Hathorne,the most unforgiving of the Salem Witch Trial

judges.

The Athens Lunatic AsylumThe Athens Lunatic Asylum, or The Ridges, has been considered one of themore haunted places on Earthever since an incident in 1978, in which thelifeless, naked body of a missing female patient was found in an unheatedroom that was locked from the inside. Her corpse left a stain, and legendhas it this darkened silhouette has remained ever since, despite numerousattempts to scrub it away.

It's also interesting to note that in 1876, two years after The Ridges opened,the number-one-listed cause of insanity among its male patients wasmasturbation, while menstrual issues were high up on the list of ills forcommitted females.
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McLean Hospital

With prominent former patients like John Nash, Ray Charles, ZeldaFitzgerald, Sylvia Plath and David Foster Wallace, McLean Hospital inBelmont, Mass., has long had a reputation as the insane asylum for the richand famous. The private facility was the setting for "The Bell Jar" and "Girl,Interrupted," and a teenage James Taylorwrote one of his first songs,"Knockin' 'Round the Zoo," about his stay at McLean.

In fact, the mellow-voiced singing legend credits the Thorazine-filled ninemonths he spent committed at McLean as a "life saver." Today, McLeanHospital is one of the most well-regarded psychiatric facilities in the world.

Pilgram Psychiatric CenterThis Long Island asylum is most famous for its sheer size -- housing about14,000 patients during its peak in the 1950s. The massive facility also
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featured a firehouse, a power plant, a bakery and a working farm.

Originally conceived with a "rest and relaxation" philosophy, Pilgram'streatment techniques become more aggressive with an increasingpopulation. In addition to lobotomies and electroshock therapy, doctors at

Pilgrim violently induced patients into comas using large doses of insulinand metrozol. A small part of the campus is still in use today, with itsabandoned acreagenow fodder for photographsand urban explorers.

Topeka State HospitalIn 1913, the Kansas legislature deemed that habitual criminals, idiots,

epileptics, imbeciles and the insane could be subject to castration. Fromthen until 1961, when the inhumane procedure was banned, about 3,000Kansans were medically rendered infertile,with majority of thosecastrations taking place at the Topeka State Hospital.

Even before the facility became a hotbed of eugenics, it had a notoriousreputation. In the early 1900s there were reports of patients being strappeddown for so long their skin had grown over their bounds. Thankfully, theTopeka State Hospital was shut down in 1997.
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Bethlem Royal Hospital

Even on a list of American insane asylums, we would be remiss if we didn'tmention Bethlem Royal Hospital in London. Bethlem, the world's oldestinstitution specializing in the mentally ill, started admitting unbalancedpatients in 1357. Throughout most of its history the conditions in theasylum were atrocious. For example, in the 18th century the public couldpay a penny for the privilege of watching the "freaks"; they were evenpermitted to poke the caged patients with a long stick.

As an indication of what a house of horrors Bethlem Royal Hospital was,the word bedlam is derived from its name.

the most famous and notorious insane asylums in history

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