3,181 Comments Posted by Lynne

Truly, m'dear. I was so afraid I was going to say something obnoxious that I would later regret (as hang-danged funny as I thought it would be) that I actually had to chew the entire thing down to a nub just to stop myself. :-)

I myself bit off my own tongue once to keep myself from responding to a bizarre comment I read somewhere. Sadly, though, I am still alive.

P.S. I actually don't believe that this particular area that Motts photographed (above) was used for alcoholic beverages, but I had just recently learned that beer, wine, and whiskey WERE purchased by institutions in the "old days", and I thought it was an interesting fact. :-)

Why, yes we are - thank you for noticing! [Beams with pride]

Some of the cafeterias I've eaten in would actually BE indistinguishable from hell . . .

P.S. From "The 18th Annual Report of the Trustees of the Willard Asylum for the Insane for the year 1886" - Schedule A - "An abstract of the vouchers audited by the Committee on Audits":

Audit date: November 7, 1885
No. of Voucher: 31
Item: New Urbana Wine Co.
For: wine
Amount: $39.52
No. of Voucher: 79
Item: L. W. Kaufman
For: whiskey
Amount: $69.00

Audit date: December 8, 1885
No. of Voucher: 156
Item: New Urbana Wine Co.
For: wine and grapes
Amount: $60.92

Audit date: January 7, 1886
No. of Voucher: 283
Item: L. W. Kaufman
For: whiskey
Amount: $66.75
No. of Voucher: 301
Item: New Urbana Wine Co.
For: wine
Amount: $38.67

Audit date: February 8, 1886
No. of Voucher: 468
Item: New Urbana Wine Co.
For: wine
Amount: $40.37
No. of Voucher: 557
Item: L. W. Kaufman
For: whisky (sic)
Amount: $69.00

For four months at that time, that was one heck of a lot of money to spend on alcohol if no one was imbibing.

I also purchased a lovely letter the other day on eBay dated July 6, 1893 from the Superintendent (O.R. Long, M.D.) of the "Michigan Asylum for Dangerous and Criminal Insane" in Ionia, Michigan, to the Pleasant Valley Wine Company of New York (it's still there, too) asking for prices on their "Great Western brand of champagne for this asylum."

Well, actually back in the beginning, beer and whiskey WERE available to staff and some patients on a regular basis. I have a number of old Annual Reports for the various "asylums" that list out everything they purchased that year, and wine, whiskey, beer, and cigarettes were in many of the older reports (up until maybe the 1920s or so). Obviously there were hospitals devoted entirely to "inebriates", but there weren't very many of them in the United States because people who were alcoholics and/or drug addicts were not considered to be "insane" until later years. In many cases they were housed elsewhere than were people who were considered to be "insane" or "feeble-minded." The inebriate hospital was something they had more of in Great Britain, if I remember correctly. However, there were a number of smaller private "sanitariums" in the US that catered to alcoholism and "narcotic fiends."

I think the room is just reflecting how tacky our tastes were at the time, myself. And truthfully, few patients' rooms were ever this ornate (unless they were pretty rich or came from rich families). I am guessing this was a staff bedroom (but that's just a guess).

Oh geez, it's been a while. Lemme see - it was Olivia deHavilland, wasn't it? And Leo Genn (I loved him in Quo Vadis) was the psychiatrist. I believe it was late 40s or early 50s, before antipsychotic medications were discovered. All they had back then were restraints, hydrotherapy, neurosurgery, and the various shock therapies (electric, insulin, Metrazol, etc.). Since there were few successful treatments, all hospitals were filled past capacity, and the states were never given enough money to adequately house or care for the many, many, many people that were sent there. This was a movie sort of proclaiming the wonders of psychotherapy, which doesn't work quite that well most of the time for people with severe and profound psychiatric disabilities. I liked the way the movie and the book painted an accurate picture of life in a psychiatric hospital at that time. What I never understood was how a movie and book could become as popular as occurred without the American people getting all riled up at the time and demanding that something be done to better the living conditions. I suppose that's why I get unhinged when people get all excited about the conditions that used to exist without trying to figure out how they got that way and why there still needs to be a lot more public knowledge and education about it.

Sorry - long answer to a short question. :-)

http://www.rocketvan.com/omat/history.php

In the book and the movie and real life she actually did have a very severe psychiatric disturbance. But it's a marvelous movie, yes.

If you actually "cared" you wouldn't make such ugly, blanket statements. To slam families who sent their child to a residential facility because it was the usual practice at the time is a cruel and hurtful thing to say. There may have been a handful of families who were embarrassed, but that was mostly because of how they were treated by others. And just like in every other home there may have been children who were abused, but tell me that doesn't happen today and with so-called "normal" children in "normal" families. "Unfit homes," my aching behind! You have made such ugly and hurtful charges against such a large segment of the population that I am stunned. The families of individuals who lived (and in some cases still live) in residential facilities are some of the kindest, gentlest, most caring people I have ever met. The pain and guilt that many of them went through (and in many cases still have) about sending their child away is some of the deepest and most grievous pain I have ever encountered. To call their homes "hell" makes me wonder about the deepest recesses of YOUR own personal soul (or perhaps your total lack of knowledge about these families). And then to assume that every single person was then sexually abused and tormented is just as sick. People like you frighten me, especially when you hide behind the "I care" label. What you care about is muckraking and voyeurism, and that is what "hell" is. My guess - you stir it up all the time and make life hell for others and then act self-righteous about it.

[Steps off soapbox and picks up bull's eye target to attach to shirt.]

It would be entirely too tacky to use a pink sink to perform a lobotomy. Besides, this procedure could be done in a doctor's office - you didn't need a surgical center or surgical sink (a pink surgical sink? Ooog!). It's a grotesquely simple procedure, actually - anesthetize the person, poke a small leucotome (or ice pick if you don't have access to a leucotome) in the roof of one of his or her eye orbits, swish it back and forth through the frontal lobes a few times, and voila! A perfect transorbital leucotomy (or lobotomy, as they were later called). No need for trepanning or other invasive surgical procedures.

People have this late night TV vision of crazed physicians running around taking off the tops of people's heads and removing large chunks of their brain, when the reality was more that they used a very small metal tool and scrambled the person's frontal lobes and took away their executive functions. That's actually scarier because it's so simple. However, it shows you how easy it is to give a human being severe brain damage and is one of the main reasons that all you people need to wear your seatbelts in the car and helmets when you motorbike and I am not kidding - this is your mother speaking - put on your gosh-darned seatbelts, people, or you'll wish the worst I did to you was give you a boring lecture about lobotomies. >:-(

God in Heaven, Me, you are right! I am sickened and disgusted to say it looks like those sadists interrogated, tortured, and then brutally dismembered an innocent Christmas tree! Oh the humanity, the humanity! 8`-( DANG those doctors and nurses and attendants - dang their cruel hides! 8`-(

P.S. Me not ~Me. ;-)

Here's a clue - it's NOT inside the building. The rest is up to you.