Sometimes my jaw drops in sheer horror...that happened today while I was reading about a particularly unpleasant mental asylum...opened in the middle of the 1800's, with beds for two hundred and fifty people, it was full almost immediately...it's use discontinued in the 1970's with the remaining patients being transferred to small group homes.
They accepted children from as young as four years old...there was an incomplete list of the reasons for children's admission...epilepsy came first, it wasn't understood at all in the 19th century and that had only vaguely improved by the 1900's...cold baths were the treatment...if you protested too often about being dunked into icy cold water, you'd be asked to leave the hospital...
Having been 'thrown from a cart' was the admission reason for one child...I wonder if it left the sufferer with brain damage...
Two were reportedly ' frightened by cows'...and one child had been 'frightened into hysterics by a dog'
Then there were the usual feeble-minded and idiots and girls with 'lax moral fibre'.
But the one which had me astounded was ' by being put inside a recently killed pig'
Who in heavens name would ever want to stuff a small child inside a dead pig...obviously they were so traumatised by this that they were sent to the asylum to recover. There were no follow-ups for any of the children so there's no way of knowing whether or not they recovered.
And this was surely abuse...an eleven year old boy was found in bed with another patient...he was removed to sleep in a different dormitory, but not before having diluted sulphuric acid applied to the end of his penis and around his anus. In case you're wondering, it was known as 'blistering' though usually the blisters were put between the shoulder blades to 'draw out impurities' .
This wasn't the Dark Ages...only in the middle to late 1800's. For most of us here on the Lung Forum, that is when our Grandparents and certainly our Great-Grand parents were alive.
Blistering was a popular remedy for impurities both real and imagined...other remedies were Chloroform...Bromide...Brandy...Digitalis...and Ammonia. One oddity on the list was the administration of two fresh eggs...not to all the child patients...just the one.
The adults were treated, as was popular at the time, with leeches attached to the forehead for sick headaches...and on the stomach for 'hysterical bowels' cold baths weren't just for the epileptics, but for women suffering from hypochondria and fainting fits brought on by hysteria...bleeding was still much in vogue, often carried out as a matter of routine if all other remedies had appeared to fail...opium pills were doled out to quieten the more excitable patients...
I think the image of a small person stuffed inside a newly dead pig and that poor boy with his sulphuric acid blisters will stay with me for a long time...
huff xxxx
Researching Other Peoples Family Trees...Has Pitfalls
Non-infective exacerbation
