Insane Asylums In 19th Century America

Imagine waking up every morning in a confined room with shackles or a stray jacket attached to you. In the 1800 this is what life was like for people living in asylums. In the 1800’s people didn’t have the medical knowledge of mental disease that we have today. In asylums people were abused and tortured. abuse included: chaining, over medication, and many more. Luckily in the 1840s a type of “reform” occurred where instead of physical abuse. They started to use more of a positive way of helping. Asylums needed to be reformed because of the mistreatment of paitents and the terrible living conditions that this abuse occurred in. The paitents in the asylums lived in terribly maintained rooms with rats and mice crawling over the floors near the tied up paitents. The conditions were very poor, most hospital wards were damp, unclean, and caused the death of many paitents. In the article “Insane asylums in 19th century America” the author states that “Hospital wards for the clinically insane were damp, cold, and unclean which caused the death of many paitents” (Clark, 45). The evidence shows a vivid image of what it was like for paitents living there. They sat there in a cold, damp room hoping they would be able to live another day. While sitting in the dark room they would most likely be …show more content…
Patients would be deprived food and water, along with physical forms of abuse, like wetting their sleeves to drive them crazy as a form of treatment. According to the article “Reform and Curability in American Insane Asylums in the 1840s” the author states “Punishment by withdrawing food, and ‘pouring water on their coat sleeves’” (Brown, 14). This quote shows a form of torture the doctor used on his patients, which he believed was the best way of treatment. The way these people were treated was terrible, in the 1840s people realized that there had to be a change or a