Timesuck with Dan Cummins - 20 - Insane Insane Asylum Tales

Episode Date: January 30, 2017

What started off as a listener suggested look into the Trans Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in Weston, West Virginia became a disturbing timesuck into the dark history of mental health patient mistreatment, especially in late 19th century America. A diagnosis of reading too many novels or being prone to day dreaming could end up getting you an "icepick lobotomy". Seriously. All this and so much more in this completely insane episode.  Pics at www.timesuckpodcast.com

Patients of the trans-Elegant lunatics asylum in Weston, West Virginia were victims of all sorts of horrors disguised as therapy in the late 19th and early 20th century, such as lobotomies. Lobotomies were a medical procedure, and they used the word medical very loosely here, in which a patient-slash helpless victim would be first rendered unconscious via electro-shock, which sounds like a horrible way to be rendered unconscious. You know, I guess general anesthesia, which they did have access to then in some rudimentary form, was just too much of a hassle. Should we get some ether doctor? No, no, no, just dad. That's

clear across the building. Just grab me those wires, just grab me those wires away. We're more fun to shock them to sleep anyway. Then the doctors slash sadist slash monster took a sharp ice pick like instrument. It actually became known as the ice pick method, which is not a comforting way to describe brain surgery. Dr. What surgical tool would you be using for the brain operation? I think I'll go with the ice pick today, nurse, why don't you? Why don't you head to the staff lounge and retrieve my medical instrument from the refrigerator? Then the doctor would insert the ice pick above the patient's eyeball through the orbit

of the eye into the frontal lobe of the brain, moving the instrument back and forth. Why not? Just wiggle it around in there. What could go wrong. That's just their noodle you're fucking with. Just their eyeball. The old ice pick is bumping up against. You know, when you're done, why not just get a sledgehammer and cure their upset stomach? Then the doctor would do the same thing on the other side of the face because you know, ice picking through one eyeball into the old thought factory just isn't gonna get the job done. They all choose electro shock therapy for all kinds of other stuff in addition to prepping patients to be turned into zombies.

You know stuff like, you know, you feel sad? Let's shock your brain a little bit. You look tired. Time for some vultz. Don't enjoy being shocked all the time? We'll strap in. Little more juice will cure you if not like getting juice to your party, pooper. Hydro therapy was also used.

A form of treatment that when used today can be as an acuus as a cold shower, followed by a hot shower causing the body's surface vessels to constrict and pushing blood to the body's core, flushing internal organs, including the brain with fresh blood and conserving heat. Hot water following this pushes blood back away from the internal organs, back out into the surface vessels, you know, and away from the brain, cleansing the body's core. Back in West and West Virginia though, hydrotherapy meant being forced to remain in an ice-cold bath for hours on end.

Patients sometimes restrained, read, tie down into the freezing tub, often as a punishment for misbehaving rather than as treatment. We notice you've been acting out and trying to escape from the hospital, which is really strange considering we've been shocking the shit out of you several times a week. Maybe being tied down into a tub of ice will get your mind working right. If not, I guess we'll just have to bring in Dr. Ice Pick, McBran's Tab or to heal you. We're just trying to heal you. Well, I'm not sure anyone was properly healed in the early days of the Trans-Alag any lunatic

asylum or any other of America's late 19th and early 20th century asylums. Find out how just bad, uh, find, find out, just how bad it got. How much worse it was before asylums? Take a little peek into some of the worst, most terrifying mental institutions in the world's history along with the state of psychiatric care today in this truly mind-boggling and utterly insane addition of time Suck. You're listening to Time Suck. Oh, welcome to today's show, everybody. Thanks for all the new listeners, big thanks to Dustin, who emailed me to do a Time Suck

about the Trans Allegheny lunatic asylum, a place I had never heard of, and actually a place where Charles Manson, former time suck topic, apparently, spent a little time, rumored, to have spent some time there in his West Virginia youth, which explains him even more. Little nod to a few time sucks back with that guy. And a big thanks to Sydney, Sis Pula, I hope I'm saying that right. S-Z-Y-P-U-L-A, Sydney, Sis Pula, I hope I'm saying that right.

S-Z-Y-P-U-L-A, Sydney, Sis Pula. Thank you for the super kind words on Facebook. Hopefully I'm pronouncing your last name. And I'm assuming Polish or at least Eastern European name, right? Thanks for messaging me about the mistreatment of the mentally ill in our nation's history, the horrific treatment slash torture they were subjected to,

specifically the bottomies, definitely getting into that heavily today. So Dustin and Sydney and the rest of you listeners, I hope this episode lives up to whatever expectations you have put upon it. So let's start with a little examination of what went on in the Trans-Alganian lunatic asylum before jumping out to touch on the history of barbaric mental health treatment in general and a quick look at some of the other horrible silums that were out there. Construction of this particular mental health

was still to be in an 1858 in Western West Virginia and it was constructed like many other 19th century of silums using the Kirkbride plan. That's an approach created by Philadelphia psychiatrists, Thomas Story Kirkbride in the mid 19th century in an emphasized architecture designed to have a curative effect on the patients with long staggering wings that gave all the rooms access to light and fresh air.

Basically Kirkbride asylums are those big, gothic old buildings constantly used in horror movies when the setting is an insane asylum. It is the go-to. When you think of a horror movie in the same asylum, you are thinking of one that was designed along with the Kirkbride plan. Giant ominous stone buildings, you know, because that's what you want.

When your brain's a little scrambled up, you're feeling down, you wanna get better. And when you're feeling anxious or sad, you just wanna spend time in a huge cavernous shadowy stone cold-building tailor made for creating spooky sounds and playing tricks on the mind. How did no one think of that? Just, hey, Mr. Kirkbright,

do you think maybe we could put the mentally ill in like peaceful little lakeside cottages, maybe cozy, unantimidating, maybe a calm, babbling brook running through the grounds? Get some nice pastelli colors for the interior walls, look, just little cozy places. They don't make lots of creepy big building noises. No, no, no, no, no.

There's no better place for someone struggling to get a firm grip on reality than a giant, dark, surreal, evil castle-looking building. You know, the kind of place that, you know, has a dungeon before I ever step and put inside. Come on, I'm a doctor. What the hell? Well, construction wasn't completed until 1881

because this building is no fucking joke And because the Civil War slowed down things a bit the building was used to house soldiers on both sides of the war The location which was named camp Tyler during the wars switched back and forth between Union and Confederate forces random trivia largest hand-cut stone masonry building in North America. And supposedly the second largest in the world next to Moscow's the Kremlin. So you probably have an image of that in your brain. They went big in Old West and West Virginia.

And they used primarily prison laborers to build it. So that might have slowed things down a bit. They're not the most motivated construction people. You know, somebody just happened to be some random job. And you're like, all right, now go build this big stone building. I don't know that they're the most skilled people to do that. But they did also a ship in, I'd say, flew in, but it was the mid 19th century. They shipped in some master stone mason's from Germany and Ireland,

overseas to prison workforce. And I have pictures of the building up at Timesuckpodcast.com and the episode description. It is a very impressive looking building. I would never want to fucking spend the night there. But it looks exactly as scary as you think, a massive hand-cut stone building would look, extremely gothic, a merging of the tutor revival and gothic revival styles to be exact

for any architecture fans out there. The first patients were admitted in 1864, so it was then known as the West Virginia Hospital for the Insane. Little softer title than lunatic asylum, but it still feels a bit derogatory. You know, why couldn't they just go with mental hospital? Or just hospital, Jesus.

If you're gonna call it the hospital for the Insane, why not just take it a half step further and call it like the loony bin, maybe the cuckoo factory. Really make everyone feel awesome about being admitted there. You okay, John? I heard you spent some time at the hospitalony bin, maybe the cuckoo factory. Really make everyone feel awesome about being admitted there. You okay, John? I heard you spent some time at the hospital last week. Oh, yeah, yeah, I'm fine.

Yeah, no, totally fine. Which hospital were you at? Oh, oh, you know, I just spent a couple days in the cuckoo factory. No big deal, nothing to be ashamed of. So why were patients admitted to trans-ig any this is one of the most fascinating parts of this episode to me the first patient was admitted in 1864 female housekeeper from Ohio said to be suffering from quote domestic trouble.

Now there's no listing of what mental illness she suffered from because in all likelihood she wasn't mentally ill. Her mental illness was domestic trouble. That was another fun aspect of 19th century mental health treatment. The cures were barbaric, and a lot of the patients didn't need curing. They weren't insane. There were people with actual severe mental illnesses like schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, psychopaths, diseases. They didn't really know, they didn't have termis for it back then And these people are walking these gothic halls

Along with people brought in because they suffered from things as vague as domestic trouble And here are some other reasons people were committed to the trends elegantly lunatic asylum taken from a list on a plaque called reasons for admission 1864 1889 and the full list It is available at timesite podcast.com. I highly suggest you look through it. It's so fucking good. But here's a few. There's about 50 of them on there. Rumor of husband murder. That's an actual reason for admission.

Rumor of husband murder. Ma'am, we believe you may have murdered your husband and you know what, maybe you didn't. Either way, we think it's best if you sit in this tub of ice. And don't worry, don't worry. Don't worry, we are doctors. This is ice pick, Dr. Ice pick, McBrain Stabber, and this is his associate, Dr. Shaki McShawkerton.

Novel reading, another one. Novel reading, as in reading too much fiction. Janice, I'm worried about you. You've been reading a lot of books lately, not just textbooks. You crack up when that copy of Moe-Dick one more time and I swear to Christ I'm taking you to the cook-o-factory. Seduction and disappointment.

Ha ha. What the fuck? Why are you here, Thomas? Well, your family is worried about how young women you've been seducing them. You've been seducing a lot of young women and those young women are concerned about how often you disappoint them. So don't worry, nothing to little ice pick with them won't clear up. D wronged masturbation.

That's another one. That's a quote, deranged masturbation. Nathaniel, it's not the masturbation we're concerned about. It's the deranged aspect of it. One day you're jerking it with the wrong hand. One day you're trying to rub it with your foot, using an old glove hot dog bun dish towel. It's the way you're jerking yourself. Politics, this might be the scariest one. It's just apparently you can be admitted for any sort of political idea. Those around you just didn't think you should have. Laziness. Laziness. That one I kind of like.

You get a fucking job, Harry. Or you can go relax over the goddamn asylum. Ah, just a couple more. I could do an entire episode of Justice List. Business nerves. That's a quote. Business nerves. We at the board don't like how nervous you've been at work these past few months. Well, the company has been tanking. I know you're worried about losing your job and ended up destitute, but you have to be

so fucking nervous about it all the time. Uh, bad whiskey. Bad whiskey was a recent fird mission. Dad, it's not the amount of whiskey you drink in the concerns as it's the quality. Nothing but bottom shell from moonshine. Can't you just drink a little Glenn Libbett like a man our family can respect? And finally my favorite,

parents were cousins. That's, oh God, cue the banjo, cue an easy hacky West Virginia joke here. Look, I'm not saying it's a good idea for cousins to have kids, but how does having cousins for parents qualify you as a reason to be institutionalized? That feels like they just couldn't pin any of the other nonsense on someone They just wanted to lock up and they just went with that just you know, just does does he drink bad whiskey?

Ah damn it. Is he lazy? Ah shit. Has he ever said anything political? Ah, he gad Has he ever masturbated in some deranged way? Only the traditional method that's unfortunate. Could his parents possibly be cousins? You're not sure do they look like they could be cousins? You guess so? Good enough for me bring him in I'll get the shackles. Oh Man, so let's talk about talk about a little quick overview of life in this asylum at Trans-Elegant. So as you can see, you can be brought here

for almost any reason. And a lot of people were brought to this place designed to hold no more than 250 patients by Kirkbrides so they could experience the open air and space, the facility eventually held roughly 2400. 20 like Jesus, like 90, nine times over nine times as many as they were supposed to have. Yeah, doctors performing horrible procedures on people who

may or may not have been mentally ill. Sounds like probably most of them weren't. You had nearly 10 times the amount of patients the place was built to hold. Overcrowd in these decay, us violence breaks out several instances of murder over the years. One instant, this just shows how little the place was built to hold, overcrowded in these decay us violence breaks out several instances of murder over the years of one instant. This just shows how little the staff was paying attention. Two patients hung one of their fellow patients using a set of bed sheets. And when he didn't die from that, they couldn't kill him that way.

They cut him down. So he's hanging up there still alive. They cut him down, use a metal bed frame to crush his head. That had to have taken a while. That's not like a quick like out of a prison movie when someone's walking by somebody else and they just, a couple quick stabs in the back and then they just walk on and pass the knife off

to another guy who passes it off to another guy. No, this was an ordeal, this was a loud ordeal. And you know, just no one stopped it. There were other murders, rapes, even the staff was attacked. One time a nurse went missing, her body was found two months later, hidden at the bottom of an unused staircase. Hopefully her body was hidden,

and things weren't so chaotic that just a dead body laying at the bottom of the stairs goes unnoticed for a few months. Sterealizations were also carried out of Trans-Eleganty. That's fun. Records of how many are a really hard to find probably because it was Really wasn't legal not totally ice picks to the brain electric shock therapy ice bass occasional beatings Maybe a rape you can get snipped get your get your nuts whacked off

That I could I could find nothing about exactly how but I mean they'd mention castration So who knows if it was chemical or blade but about exactly how, but I mean, they'd mentioned castration. So who knows if it was chemical or blade, but I probably some nuts got chopped off. I can't confirm that one 1,000%, but everything I could find alluded strongly to that. Series of reports published by the Charleston Gazette in 1949 are revealed poor sanitation and a lack of furniture, light and heat, much of the building.

So on top of everything I've already said, it was freezing and sprinkled with shit. And you're there all because you read too many books. Man, what a great place to have a life. So, um, and all of the place that was supposed to be part of a new mental health movement in the US, a place where the mentally ill be treated better than they had before. You know, like, as I stated earlier, the asylum was built according to the Kirkbride plan. Let's get into that a little bit more. Thomas Kirkbride, Thomas Story Kirkbride, was born in 1809, he was a Philadelphia psychiatrist, and he thought institutions for the mentally ill

should be built according to what he called moral treatment. And moral treatment was basically response away from thinking that people were possessed by demons. They were trying to move away from that, which is a step in the right direction. And the typical floor plan, long rambling wings arranged in echelons, staggered sewage-connected wings,

received sunlight and fresh air. And it was meant to promote privacy and comfort for patients. The building form itself was meant to have a curative effect, as I stated, a special apparatus for the care of lunacy, whose grounds should be highly improved and tastefully ornamented. The idea of this institutionalization was central to Kirkbride's plan for effectively treating patients with mental illness. They were large, imposing, Victoria area institutional buildings with extensive surrounding

well-kept grounds, which often included farmlands. Sometimes the patients work there as a part of physical exercise in therapy. And it sounds good in theory. It does sound good in theory, I will say, to have that kind of, I'm supposed to be a tranquil place, but it didn't work out like he intended. He didn't help mentally, like he wanted to, unfortunately. He did, however, literally build a setting for hundreds of horror movies. So that's, you know, that's something his giant scary mental hospitals are all over

the place. And most of them are now in ruins. And over 60 were built in the mid to late 1800s. And again, they're built all over the place from Wenton West Virginia to Philly to DC Cleveland, Napa California, Bangor main. I don't know, maybe, maybe the influence young Stephen King a bit. Who knows? Even to the Fergus Falls State Hospital in Fergus Falls, Minnesota, home to a friend, mine just a little place, like 15,000 people I think, but also a home to a fantastic comic Chad Daniels, so I believe has a new album coming out any day now. It's a little shout out for Chad. Also a listener of the show, so that's fun. And so here's what led up to this kind of reformation and why these buildings were built. It all started with Dorothea Dix.

Dorothea did, I can't bring out the Kirkbride, bring up Kirkbride without referencing her. She's the reason the building designs were commissioned in the first place before the Gothic Kirkbride institutions, the buildings nearly everyone pictures in their minds when they think of an insane asylum. There really were very, very few institutions in America for the treatment of the mentally a very few. Prior to about 1850, people's society deemed insane. We're customarily thrown into snake pits, attacked by wild dogs, or sometimes even thrown into tar pits and set on fire as people watched. Okay, I'm kidding about those last couple things. I just felt the urge to go over the top and I went with it. No. Okay, I'm kidding about those last couple of things. I'm kidding about that.

I just felt the urge to go over the top and I went with it. No, in the other 19th century, there were, again, very few hospitals for the mentally ill United States. The first institution dedicated to treatment of the mentally ill was the Eastern State Hospital in Williamsburg, Virginia. Started to admit admitting patients way back in 1773. Even earlier than that, the Pennsylvania Hospital founded in Philly back in 1773. Even earlier than that, the Pennsylvania hospital founded in Philly back in 1751. It had a small, you just

expect section dedicated to the treatment of the insane. It started admitting them in 1752. Worldwide, you can actually trace some form of treatment for the mentally ill as far back as the Greek physician Hippocrates. Hippocrates, there we go. The man, the Hippocratic Oath, is named after who prescribed various treatments for the mentally ill that included a rest, quiet and primitive medicine. That was way back in 400 BC. Muslim doctors in the Arab world began building asylums for the mentally ill back in the 18th century. Places like Cairo and Egypt, first European asylum for the treatment of the

insane was the Valencia mental hospital open in Valencia, Spain in 1406 and London, England, the the priori of St. Mary of Bethlehem which later became known asylum for the treatment of the insane was the Valencia mental hospital, open in Valencia, Spain in 1406, and London, England, the the primary of St. Mary of Bethlehem, which later became known as the notorious asylum bedlam. That was founded in 1247. And none of these places had any fucking idea how to treatment aloneness.

Some of them, you know, at least didn't torture patients, but none of them cured anything. And they were really a drop in the bucket to combat the problem of mental illness and ancient times. Most mentally ill people were taken care of by various religious institutions. People deemed mad being locked away in monasteries,

for example, many were just cared for by their families. And since the families didn't know how to care for them, they were like, often like literally just locked in a basement or cellar or some room. They just like, let's just, you know, fucking throw some food under the door, clean up their ship from time to time. You know, think about sloth from goonies. It was that kind of shit for most people who had severe mental illness. They couldn't cure them because they didn't know what caused people to act crazy. In medieval Europe,

you know, for example, most people believed that mental illness was a symptom of a troubled soul. They thought the cause was demonic possession, sorcery, or witchcraft, and you know, a common treatment was exorcism. And this line of thinking was, you know, it's still, again, very prevalent in 19th century America. A lot of witches were burned at the stake. They were probably just people who were mentally ill. Another prevailing notion throughout history was that it was a choice.

These people were choosing to act nuts, you know, just avoid and live responsibilities with their horseshit nonsense. Stop choosing to be such a ding dong. Get back to work. Think about how it must have been back then. Like I like the Santa Monica, California for six years. And that city has a ton of obviously insane homeless people. Like clearly the second you seem like, oh, like I had severe mental illness. People, you know, with like dirt covered faces, you know, just wild eyes shaking

their arms back and forth, you know, looking up in the sky and yelling. People getting heated arguments with themselves or some person that no one can see. And it's always somewhat shocking when you see that, at least for me. But I always know when I see it, what's going on? I know that there's some type of, there having some kind of psychotic or delusional episode,

they have a serious mental health problem, they're a need of medication and care. But what if I thought that they were like choosing to act like that, or what if you thought they were possessed by a demon, know that their immoral choices led them to this craze states like no wonder the mentally ill were shackled up and so horribly mistreated. You know if I believe in demons if I believe in actual fucking demons think about just that for a second that reality like like you know you believe in literal monsters paranormal

nefarious malicious spirits that want to damn every soul around them to hell forever, where there's gonna be gnashing of teeth and torture. I believe that, and then there's some schizophrenic dude in my neighborhood, and I see him yelling crazy talk at my kids. I'm gonna want that fucking to be shackled up. You know, do what you gotta do. Throw him in a dungeon, shackle him,

whip the devil out of him, drill a hole in his head, let the demon out. Whatever, I don't care, just keep him from spreading his evil ways and damning my children souls Yeah, I think about that because sometimes it's so easy to demonize medieval people, but you know I often just forget what kind of mental space they were living it I mean these were people who truly believed And they're heart of hearts and they and witches and demons and devils and sorcerers and some angry always watching God getting you know

Judging them set him to hell a lot of extreme shit. Constantly worried about damnation. Well a lot of these medieval attitudes came over to the Americas with our good old pure tanical roots and before door Thea Dix most mentally ill people are again hidden at home hidden by some religious group or in Alms houses you know those which are those group homes run by charity organizations to house the disabled downtrod, elderly, et cetera. They were thrown in prisons with non-insane criminals.

Only a few were housed in, again, the very few mental health hospitals that existed and those, you know, there were serious overcrowding mistreatment. And then in the mid 19th century, Dorothy had dicks almost single-handedly started changing all that. She was born in Hampton, Maine in 1802, and by her teens she became a school teacher. Partly because she was interested in educating others at an early age, and partly because back then,

you didn't have to even go to high school to become a teacher. I'm not kidding, isn't that weird? Can you read Gooder than most? Can you do some arithmetic? Yeah, we'll grab some apples, blackboard and desk. Your teacher now, your teacher now. You are a teacher now. Say it in teacher chair.

Dorthia, she had a very limited formal education herself. In 1821, she opens her own school at the age of 19. By the age of 24, she published a teacher's guide that became extremely popular, going through 60 reprints over the next 30 years, conversations on common things or guide to knowledge with questions. Yep, she was one of those people. The kind you both admire and also hate

because they make you feel bad about yourself, you know, when you think about them. She went to school and published a successful book by the age of 24. When I was 24, I was struggling to make 500 bucks a week, telling half thought out jokes to drunks and hotel lounges, and the worst comedy clubs in America, sleeping in motel sixes. Damn it. When she goes on to publish several other books,

including some books of poetry, continues teaching by all accounts. She was an extremely hard worker, and like some overachievers, she put herself, pushed herself too hard, had a mental breakdown in 1836, at the age of 34, and spent some time in a little institution herself and luckily she had rich family members and she was able to Be out quickly and

Head to Europe for a year to kind of convalescent recover She did and she also met some Early mental health advocates over in Europe. I know just changed her way of seeing things She came back to the States with a new passion for the better treatment of the mentally ill. And after receiving a large inheritance from the death of her grandma in 1837, who was able to focus her very active mind, entirely on reform and charity. No more teaching those damn kids. Finally in 1841, Dorothy and Dix volunteered to teach Sunday school classes to female convicts in East Cambridge jail over New Jersey during her visit.

She saw people with mental illnesses who had been treated inhumanly and neglected and she became determined to improve conditions. And by 1843, it was Massachusetts, not New Jersey. And by 1843, was speaking to the Massachusetts state legislature about better treatment and the establishment of staterun institutions for the treatment of the mentally ill. Her reports filled with dramatic accounts of prisoners being flogged, starved, chained, physically and sexually abused by their keepers, left naked without heat or sanitation. These reports shocked her audience, galvanized a movement to improve conditions for the imprisoned and the insane, and her work directly led to funding for all those Kirkbriot silums between 1825 and 1865, the number of asylum in the United States increased from nine to 62. And then it just kept on increasing from there. Sadly, those places ended up becoming just as bad as a place she was getting people

out of, but at least the government was starting to take treatment of the mentally ill more seriously. And it did help improve the mental health movement in the effect that it went away from these old beliefs and demonic origins of mental illness and the belief that you know you could just will yourself into getting better. And then they knew something else at least was going on. And then interestingly, Dorothea Dix died in 1887 at the age of 85 in a New Jersey hospital in Trenton. One of these silums she helped establish. How is that for dedication to the cause? You know, this place is good enough for the mentally ill. It's good enough for me. I don't think I'd be that committed. Well, well, if you're so proud of your new mental health

facility, why don't you just go live there yourself? You know, you know, in second thought, I'm actually not that proud of it. I'm going to go grab a nice hotel for my final years. Some place with room service, some place without portated maniacs. So anyway, that's a little info about how asylum such as the Trans-Allaghanian lunatic asylum in West-Wenton, West Virginia, came to exist, brief overview of how things were for the mentally ill before the advent of asylums. And all my research about this particular asylum and the history of asylums in general, I inevitably came across some articles about some of America's and some of the world's worst of silence. So let's take a let's take a

peek and do a little bit of what I found and dig into a new segment. I'm calling All right, let's start with Depeca State Hospital, Kansas. The Depeca State's hospital's legacy is a story of a patient who had been strapped down so long that his skin had started growing over the straps. Holy shit. I don't know how long that would take, but I'm guessing over a year, just being strapped so long that your skin just, it just like, it starts to absorb the, oh my, that's like something out of a horror movie. There was also reports of abuse, rape, castration as a means to control their patients. Castration went on there until the mid 1940s. Holy shit. If you do escape being

shackled and naked, being naked for months on end, there was a very different kind of hell waiting for you at the Depeca State Hospital. Patients were given absolutely nothing to do in an attempt to avoid overstimulating them. And they were just putting rocking chairs and just forced to stare blankly at walls. Oh, that's, at one point, it's like, oh, what's the big deal you just hit in the rock? And that sounds like, man, so horrible. Just what, because I'm sure that went on for like years

to sit in there in the rock and chair thinking about how fun life used to be when you still had nuts before they took them from you. What a special kind of hell, my God. The Danvers State Hospital in Massachusetts, this is another Gothic Kirkbright asylum. The structure was originally meant to contain 600 patients, but in 1939 it had a daily population of 2,360. It was about four times what it was supposed to,

the huge Gothic building was constructed in the 1870s, as a home for the mentally ill and insane, aiming to treat its inhabitants with kindness and compassion. But then it became known as the birthplace of the lobotomy. Oh, God. Physician Walter Freeman performed the US's first transorbitable lobotomy in 1936. After that, many large psychiatric hospitals

took to the procedure, and they started using it themselves, as procedure of the ice pick to the eye that I Scribed earlier which was used to treat everything from day dreaming and back aches to delusions and major depression My god, you go in there with a sore back. May my back's really hurting Can you can you help me with that doctor? Oh, yeah, yeah, just lay down over there. Let me grab my ice pick What why would you? No, no't know. It fixes everything. It fixes everything. We found out that just a little picking around, a little stabby motion, through your eye and your brain,

really just kind of knocks out most of everything. You won't care about anything after that. Oh man, the doctors did other things there. Like overdosing patients on insulin, putting them into these comas. That was supposed to somehow cure mental illness, violent shock treatments. And sometimes they did that just again, a lot of times these places did that as a way to control the

population. Like, hey, if I can calm down, or you get Dr. Shaky McShakerton again. Dan versus finally shuttered in 1992, and a lot of the remains buildings have been turned into apartments. My God, my God, man, this old doctor, ice pick McBrain's tab, or he and Dr. Shocky McShockered, and that's mostly where they're completed their residences, residences, and now, and now, now, turning into apartments. Why, what?

Living in an apartment that used to be part of an insane asylum where the ice pick lobotomy was invented. Why, why? You, you know, you know that some dark fucking weirdos live there right now, right? I bet there are pentagrams and weegee boards in no less than 10% of those apartments, and I would say at least 15% of the men living in these apartments on a black trench coat and listen to Scandinavian death metal. Okay, another treatment device that may have been used at either one of the above mentioned asylums is the tranquilizer chair, the old tranquilizer chair.

And it is as bad as it sounds. This is a mechanical chair invented by Dr. Benjamin Rush, who is regarded as the father of American psychiatry. It was a device in order to treat or constrain mental patients during treatment. Dr. Rush, he was the first psychiatrist in America to believe that mental illness is disease of the mind and not a possession of Demons and that's the only good thing he added to anything his classic work observations and inquiries upon the diseases of the mind

Published in 1812 was the first psychiatric textbook printed in the US and his belief the time was that yeah Madness was an arterial disease an inflammation of the brain as it was believed that an arterial disease, an inflammation of the brain. As it was believed that mental illness was caused by abnormalities in the bodily humors or blood, this chair was designed to allow a physician to easily bleed his patient and or treat the humors themselves by controlling blood flow and pressure. So you can bleed them, or you can let's like cut off circulation

to various parts of the body. Rush believe that holding the patient in the special design designed confining chair would control blood flow to the brain and lessened muscular physical activity to lower blood pressure and heart rate. Basically, the mechanics of the chair had the patient restrained,

so it's not to move at all. Enforced physical relaxation, yep, sure it was very relaxing. A patient would sit upright with their arms, legs, and chest bound to the chair while their head was kept in a partially open box. I have a picture of this chair at timesoappodcast.com. It is fucking horrific.

It's like a torture chair. It's an obvious torture chair. To be fair, the doctor bleeding via cutting open a vein or artery and literally just letting it bleed for a while was a popular treatment of the day. As was applying a shit ton of leeches to someone's body, which is that one was more popular in Europe. But even George Washington would bleed from time to time when he wasn't feeling good.

Just get that bad blood out. Ugh. Okay. Now let's cut to the modern day. Everything we've looked at so far has been what's gone on the past, what's gone on America. Let's see what's going on right now in a horrible central American mental health facility. The the Frederico Mora

Hospital. This is from a 2014 BBC article in an episode of the BBC show our world world's most dangerous hospital. This is hospital in Guatemala has been described by campaigners trying to reform it as the world's most abusive and dangerous mental health institution. This is these, you know, BBC people go in and they say that the patients appear to have been heavily sedated. Their heads have been shaved and most are dressed in rags with nothing on their feet.

Others are completely naked, exposing their dirty skin covered in their feces. They look more like concentration camp prisoners and patients. The Fredrico Moral Hospital is home to about 340 patients, including 50 violent and mentally disturbed criminals. A male nurse tells me that two or three nurses have to look after 60 to 70 patients, you know, just that little team are responsible for that many. And then they explain that that's why they have to sedate them constantly, just to be able to do their jobs. And while the BBC is filming the director, himself, of this place admits that the guard sexually

abused the patient. The hospital, he says, is a big place where anything can happen. Holy shit, what a, that's pretty bad. When as the director, you know, being interviewed for a doctor, you're like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, a lot of my patients are getting raped.

Yeah, oh yeah, real problem. Something I need to talk to the director about. Wait, but wait, but you're the director. Ooh, that's interesting. That is interesting. How does that make you feel to know that I'm the director talking about the director? One woman says she was sexually abused by a male nurse while sleeping. She was just 17 at the time, a virgin. She says since she was sedated, she wasn't aware about it.

You know, that it happened, but then, you know, blood on the sheets next day, she realizes what's, what's gone. And then she's pregnant. And the US campaign group disability rights international, DRI, spent three years collecting evidence on Fred Rico Mora and in a report published in 2012, the group described the hospital as, yeah, the most dangerous facility our investigators have witnessed anywhere in the Americas. On one visit, DRI managed to film a female patient explaining she had been sexually abused on her first day in the hospital while tied to a wall.

And they say, quote, the sexual abuse makes this place one layer more horrific than any place I've been seen before. Hospital staff, fearing reprisals for speaking out, did speak to the BBC reports on the condition that it could be interviewed together. And they just said, we don't have the medication, we need to treat the patients, it's dirty,

there are rats and cockroaches. I think I speak for all of us when I say that the abuse is committed in the hospital by guards or common knowledge. Oh man, the staff, I guess we're in tears when they're saying this, it's not just dangerous for the patients, but for us too, we have complained,

but no one listens, working as a hospital is terrifying. So if you're traveling to Guatemala, good idea, not to appear insane there. Sounds like a terrible place to be committed. There are other places in Serbia and Mexico, in North Korea, et cetera, that seem just as bad and possibly maybe even worse, but unless patients are being routinely executed somewhere

or still being given lobotomies, some place they haven't heard of, I feel like constant raping is about as bad as it gets. Starvation covered in feces and constantly raped. Shitty place, Shitty place, not getting five stars and any kind of trip advisor report. And now let's get to bedlam. And I bring up bedlam because I don't think any discussion of insane assignments would be complete without digging into bedlam, the original modern madhouse.

This place is so fucking nuts that the name for the institution, the nickname, Bedlam became its own word, a word now defined as a scene or state of wild uproar and confusion. Like, think about that. Its very name is synonymous with mayhem, and that says a lot.

So here's a quick history of it. It started innocently enough as a charitable institution, but eventually Bethlehem Royal Hospital became known as Bethlehem, one of the worst places in the world. In 1247, the priori of the new order of St. Mary of Bethlehem opened it in Bishop's Gate London, and its original goal was to collect money to aid the Crusader Church, monks managed the building,

donated the collected coins to the poorest in London, and then went from a charitable institution to an asylum a couple years later as the monks noticed a number of mad homeless people, you know, just on the streets of London. No one obviously understood much about psychiatry in those days. We already know that now. People who had conditions we know now as depression, dementia, schizophrenia, epilepsy, anxiety, learning disabilities, other mental illnesses, we're all housed together and given the exact same treatment. And this is treatment administered by the monks,

included daily punishments, and lessons in scripture. They were given a diet, it was very plain, free of vegetables. I don't know why that should help. Inventory records show that the monks purchased chains, locks, manacles, stocks, you know, those little things where your head gets put through the board and your hands and you're just fucking stuck there. Presumably devices that they use for, you know, treatment. Yeah, that sounds great. Just torture bread, meat, and Jesus. If that doesn't get you feeling better, you're just being difficult.

I'm sure that place was a living hell for everyone who stayed there. The Monks were replaced in 1370 by Ed. Ed. King Edward the third. Why don't I just call him Ed. They were replaced in 1370 by Ed. Ed, King Edward the third. Why did I just call him Ed? They were replaced in 1370 by Ed. You know, Eddie, King Eddie. The people he appointed in their place

became known as keepers, and they had little to no experience with treaty the mentally ill or even working in the hospital. But to be fair, who the fuck knew anything about mental illness back then? 1403 hospital treasure, Peter Taviner, what a British-chounding name. Mr. Taviner,

Barrista Taviner, was found guilty of theft and embezzlement by now the hospital was already known as Bedlam. Bedlam, such an eatenafaria-sounding name. Bedlam. When the city of London took over the management of the hospital in 1546, the governors of Brideswell appointed their own keepers.

Things got much worse after that I have an expect inspection in 1598 the hospital was deemed not fit for any man to dwell and that's a quote and called quote Lothamlessly Philfully Filthily kept and this is by medieval standards So you know it's fucking terrible. I mean, there's been people are used to live it on dirt floors with no proper sanitation, and they're like, oh, no, no one should live here. Oh, at the time, there were 21 patients

who had been locked up for the better part of a decade, probably shackles, you know? Wanted to be there for more than 20 years. Oh, King James, I don't know how do you live that long in that kind of situation. King James, the first appointed, Halkaya Crook, to Mr. Crook, perfect, to administer the hospital.

Should have picked someone else. It's true to his name, he embezzled money, stole from patients, took the charitable donations for himself, whatever money he just, whatever things he didn't keep, he sold to the patients. So it's not like people would give them food for charity, and then he would charge the patients for the free food he was given. And if you didn't pay up, you fucking starve to death. My God,

you're already in this torture hellhole pit. And now you're, now you have to, how do you even pay for food? You just have to hope that like family members, you know, give it to you if you're abandoned, you're just, you're just shit out of luck. Well, the new King Charles I orders an inspection of Bethlehem in 16 to 31. And again, that's if you're abandoned, you're just shit out of luck. Well, the new King Charles I orders an inspection of Bethlehem in 16 to 31. And again, that's if you're confused why I'm going back and forth with names. That's the official name, Bethlehem, Bethlehem,

there's synonymous, launched an investigation when it was determined that most of the patients were probably gonna starve to death. And then Krik was fired two years later. That was my favorite lines in researching this. We're like, hey, man. We realize that you've been taking a lot of the money and a lot of the people are starving to death.

So shit has to change. Or in a couple of years, we're gonna let you go. How does he still work there for two years? Charles I put a new system in place that included a physician, a visiting surgeon, and apothecary. But again, these are like 17th century surgeons, so it's like somebody like a tad less barbaric. Hospital closed

in 1667, reopened in a new building at Morefields in 1675. This new hospital was sprawling and expensive, became known as a palace for lunatics. Because after just 13 years, it opened to the public as an attraction. And just for people coming in to see the attraction, two ominous statues were installed over its entrance gate, one named Melancholy who appeared calm, but sad. And the other named Ravine Madness and this crazy pose who was chained and angry. How fucking evil is that? Let's let the public come in and mock the patients.

Let's put two scary evil-looking statues out front to give the place kind of a haunted house vibe too. Just make it real cartoonish not take us here. It's late all and the patients were we're still cruelly treated at this pretty palace They they regarded as prisoners instead of ill people that were neglected starve locked away in isolation and then the The visitors were allowed to come there interact with the patients kind of like like they were seen animals in a zoo People from all walks of life would give the patients pennies to encourage them to sing songs and fucking dance. Oh my God. Ah, here's a penny, you nut.

Now do a little jig for me. Jesus. Ah, that's so cruel. The patients were forced to visit us against their will. You know, you don't wanna fucking dance? Well, too bad. Here's the whip, get out there, go on go on dance and even better the visitors weren't even supervised They could just kind of come as they please walk around any where they went

They were able to drink alcohol. I don't know if it was served there or not But they were they were they would come there and get drunk and And holly says holidays drew particularly large crowds that often turned loud and rowdy. One writer living in London said Bethel was, quote, a dry wart for loiterers, a promenade of rogues. I love the language they used back then. Henry McKenzie's 1771 work, the man of feeling described a visit to the hospital as follows, quote, their conductor led them first to the dismal mansions of those who are in the most horrid state of incurable madness, the clanking of chains,

the wildness of their cries, and the appreciations which some of them uttered formed a scene inexpressibly shocking. Again, holy shit. You know, let's not only let the general public come gock at our patients, let's let them get drunk and just party there and just not even supervise it. Like imagine if a young good-looking female patient at this this place her life was a parade of horrors you know it Well, a new manager came in 1795 John Haslam He believed he could cure madness and practice his own brand of therapy on his patients They were beaten severely Until they could behave the way he demanded he wanted to beat the bad behavior out of them

His therapeutic approach involved quote complete domination. So he sounds like a real fucking peach. Patients were given cold baths, made to sit in swings for rotation therapy. This is one of the most horrible methods I found here, just in just so nonsensical and absurd. Rotation therapy is when a patient is put in a chair that suspended from the ceiling by something like a chain. And then the chair was then spun

at the direction of the doctor. Sometimes it more than a hundred rotations a minute. The patient would often vomit, experience extreme vertigo, pass out. But this was all seen as healthy reactions with the potential for healing. Again, I have a picture for this device up at timesuppodcast.com. Who thinks out the shit? What quack doctor comes up with some correlation between vomit and better mental health? God life sucked when no one understood how the body or the mind worked They thought mentally that you just like vomit out mental illness The chief surgeon at this time was Brian Cother hired by Haslam himself

Cother began his own experiments in the morgue carefully dissecting the brains of dead patients So he was he sounds like an interesting dude as well 1814 an outsider visit the hospital, saw these deplorable conditions, found patients chained to walls, naked, malnourished. Patients were also victim to bloodletting by leeches, cupping glass therapy.

You may have heard of that from the Olympian Michael Phelps. I remember he had all those bruises on his body, this last Olympics, you know, some, they had some kind of suction cup thing to pull blood to the surface, increase blood flow, increase athletic performance. I don't know if I buy any of that shit,

but I'm sure that wasn't used for that in bed limit. It was just like, let's see if this painful odd blood moving technique does anything for these poor people's broken brains. There was the inducing of blisters, which is even worse than it sounds. They were just fucking burn people to create blisters on the skin

and then drain the blister of that good old insanity juice. Looks like you got a little bit of insanity juice in your blister. What the fuck, what if that actually worked? Just how, who knew? Who knew the voices in my head were coming from the blister juice? Oh, good thing you poured some of that boiling water

on my back at the time. I thought it was just needless torture, but you, you, you sigh are a visionary. Treatment was so severe that the facility refused to admit patients deemed too meek to withstand it. You had to be strong. You could be admitted there so you could withstand the torture. And indeed many of those people didn't even survive. Modern investigations have uncovered these mass graves on the property dug exclusively for those who died under Bedlam's hair and just the conditions. One guy there at this former Marine was inside a and mass graves on the property dug exclusively for those who died under Bedlam's hair.

And just the conditions, man. One guy there, this former Marine, was inside a chain harness, like this weird like chain harness swing, that could be controlled by the staff. And basically when they pulled on it, he would just slam it against the wall. And this man had been in this rig for nine to 12 years.

Nine to 12 years, and a fucking swinging torture chair getting slammed into the wall. I want God's name. Do you rationalize using that as some type of curative device? I don't think you do. I think you pissed off somebody and spend the next 12 years regretting it, you know? Really regretting saying like,

what are you gonna do about it then? What are you gonna do about it? And then the next 12 years, just like, oh, shit. Eventually, sketches of the inside of the hospital were published in the newspaper, forcing yet another investigation. It would become the biggest investigation into the history of any asylum,

both Haslam and the chief surgeon were fired. Should have been killed, Jesus. Things finally changed, but again, they're living in a different time. I don't know. Things finally changed when a resident physician William Hood took over in 1852. His therapeutic techniques promoted a more peaceful, quiet environment.

He brought in magazines and crafts to keep patients busy, even held monthly dances, where patients could mingle with the staff and visitors, but not in a creepy, weird way, like before. New building was purchased in 1926, and the entire operation moved to Beckenham in 1930, and Bethlehem remains there to this day. A museum was opened in 1970 to display its artwork from patients and archives from the hospital's history. They continue to provide psychiatric care

of the days of chaining patients to the walls and starving them, thankfully, are over. It is still referred to as Bedlam, though. Man, if only tied, swinging chair guy was alive to see how far they'd come. All right, well now we know exactly how bad things used to be for the mentally ill and for people who, you know, they dreamed and had political ideas. Today at least in America, the mentally ill seem to be treated a lot better. I'm sure there's some level of abuse in certain places

that it continues, I mean, as it has against the helpless and large institutions, it's a dawn of humanity. But things overall are way better than they were as recent as the mid-20th century. According to numerous articles, I've read about the state of modern mental health facilities in America. They no longer use straight jackets, something that was at least, I guess was the least

of your problems back the 19th century. Straight jackets were invented in 1790 and routinely used in all the facilities I described, such as trans-allegating. Now they use chemical restraints, which is a pleasant euphemism for a knockout drug. Still, I do think being drug is better than being kept in the straight jacket or, you know, chain to a wall. You get to bring your clothes, except for belts and other stuff, you could, you know, hurt yourself with or hang yourself with.

You get to actually wear what you want. You know, you probably have to leave your favorite knife necklace or brass knuckle belt buckle at home, but at least don't have to wear a hospital gown or be naked and covered in shit. You're generally not stuck there for years. Most people only stay 72 hours or less, because that's the law on most dates for how long a psychiatric hospital can hold you without your consent.

I mean, that's obviously not true for the criminally insane who are sentenced to those places, but you know odds are you're not gonna spend 10 years in some padded room because you have business nerves or drink bad whiskey. You don't get thrown in a nice bath, lobotomized, castrated or shocked anymore. If you're out of control,

you're chemically restrained, occasionally restrained, briefly with hand restraints, which sounds kind of like a handcuffs. For the most part, you're just monitored by staff, and staff who seem less abusive and rapier than they did in days past. Other than that, it sounds like it's a lot of meetings with doctors to see how you're responding to various medications, individual therapy sessions, group sessions, group recreation, you know stuff like watching movies or playing board games, Fizzitation hours, decent meals, basically it sounds like a better place to live than your average home in a third world country. To describe it in the words of someone who's actually stayed in a mental institution. Here's a little excerpt from Jennifer O'Brien. I will read who described what's saying at the Holy Hill Hospital, a psych hospital in Raleigh, North Carolina, was like in an article for psychcentral.com just a couple years back.

She says, mental hospitals are very misunderstood places. There was a certain stigma, not only attached to being a patient in a mental hospital, but to the whole field of mental health to begin with. The people I met during my stay at Holy Hill were not crazy. They were not nuts. They just needed a little extra help and the safe relaxing place to recuperate from their problems. Most of the people I met were perfectly normal, functioning members of society with jobs, families, friends,

and a positive future. Some were students like myself. Going to a mental hospital is nothing to be ashamed of or embarrassed by and I encourage everyone to take that step if they find it necessary. Life can be overwhelming and sometimes we just need to heal. Holy heal changed my life. I went in suicidal, depressed, and a terrified mess and two months later I came out and the process had been healed with new friends and a new perspective on life. My hospitalization not only saved my life, it changed it. Well, nice to see things have gotten a lot better and that the movement door Theodic started, you know, while it took a little longer than she had hoped to to really kind of change things in the way she wanted She did change things eventually, you know that that is nice all of that was you know a lot nicer than

You know being forced to dance with drunks and being horribly abused by staff and tortured Wow, well enough positivity. Time for some top five takeaways. Time, suck, top five takeaways. All right, number one, if you're mentally ill, do not step inside a time machine and travel back to any place in the world before 1950. And don't even go back to yesterday in Guatemala. It's super sucks. Number two, less than a hundred years ago,

people who had actually graduated from medical school were still using the equivalent of an ice pick to scramble the brains of people who suffer from things like daydreaming too much. Oh, Jesus, I don't know about you, but that makes me a little leery of doctors today. Hopefully a hundred years from now, no one will be pointing out something equally insane currently happening. Number three, reading too many novels masturbating in a deranged way and being stressed out about your job or valid reasons to be admitted to an overcrowded asylum where you can be raped and or killed in the

late 19th century. Other reasons I didn't mention earlier are greediness, women trouble, overstudy of religion, immoral life, how wonderfully vague and subjective that one is. Self abuse. You've been abusing yourself? Well, let's get you into the asylum so we can abuse you too, my friends. Stop hogging all the fun you maniac. Number four, mental health advocate to orthodox was so committed to the mental health

reformation. Ca, she spent the last six years of her life living. And one of the very silombs she helped get created and built. She's either a much better person than any of us, or also was insane herself. That is some crazy shit. Number five, if you come across a large gothic for boating 19th century estate that is now closed, other than for the occasional corny ghost tour, but used to being insane to silom, you now know that Oz are.

It was designed by Dr. Thomas Kirkbride. You know, just a little time suck knowledge for you to drop a dinner or at a party, you know, so you can come across a little smarter and in the know than your friends and family. I mean, that's part of why we do this, isn't it? Time suck. Top five takeaway. Oh, okay, everybody. We did it. We did it. Thanks for exploring another time suck with me. Everyone, thanks for all the comments and emails

and social media posts and the wonderful iTunes reviews this past week so, so nice, so nice. And for clearly talking to your friends about the podcast, it feels like that bonus alien episode is gonna be coming up a lot faster than I expected. We're only around 30 iTunes reviews from hitting that magical 200, uh, ITN review number and recording the bonus Friday Paranormal Extravaganza. Also thanks

for the topic suggestions. They've been pouring in and I've been adding all of them to the list, potential future episodes. A lot of great stuff to choose from. Very excited. I love learning about things. I would have never even thought to explore. You know, why couldn't school have been this fun? Maybe if it was more fun, I would have ended up with a real job and never got into comedy in the first place and we'd never have this podcast though. So thanks for being super boring math

and computer science professors. And thanks to all the new listeners who moved over from Pandora after listening to me talk about the podcast, my Dan Cummins Pandora station. And finally, some tour dates. I'm gonna be at Xanies in Chicago, February 8th through the 11th, Hyenas in Plano, Texas, a suburb of Dallas, February 23rd through 25th. I'll be at the

Tacoma comedy club into coma, Washington, March 2 through 4th, Charlie Goodnights and Raleigh North Carolina, March 9 through 11th. Tons of more dates listed more being added at Dancomans.tv or you can follow me on Instagram or Facebook at Dancomans.com. We'll look for posts about tour dates. Also a link to tour dates at good old time. So podcast dot com where you can find pictures that correspond to this episode and all the other episodes. So have a great week. Everybody stay curious.

And if you're committed to a mental institution and you're not enjoying your stay, think about this episode and be glad that you're not being shackled needlessly spun around until you vomit or having a sadist poke around in your noggin with an ice pick. Life is really all about perspective, isn't it? you