Comments

wrote:
By away everybody, please tell me about this building. I heard about this place,I heard that if the mental child had bit somebody what they do is the doctor or whatever had sat the client( child)on the dental chair and start pulling all their teeth out so they wouldn't bite other children. is that true?
wrote:
I like your title, "November Chills", quite apropos! I get the "chills" just looking at those adult cribs...so despondent. : (
wrote:
Another interesting juxtapostion! A beautiful, ornate gate, against a very sad and lonely place.
wrote:
I like your poetic description of these tubs at the beginning of your piece; you could write novels! : ) What a great find to have the canvases still attached. The tubs do look mummified-so strange, and yet so sad...
Ephemera: Continuous Bath Time
wrote:
These photos where taken the same year I was born. It is really sad to think these atrocities happened in my life time. Almost like onto the Salem witch trials or the Holocaust. I think think these things done to the patients where atrocities in every sense of the word. And I think Dr Freeman was just as bad as Hitler was. Sorry for the rant
Ephemera: Continuous Bath Time
wrote:
Nice to see folks receiving treatment from what appears to be well-trained, efficient nurses. In another 10 years, Life would publish photos taken at Byberry in Philly of naked, filthy men warehoused in hospital basements and sleeping on the floor. They were taken by conscientious objectors who served as orderlies there in WWII. Another interesting hydro treatment is the "cold wet pack" where sheets are soaked in icewater, then wrung out and wrapped tightly around a patient like a cocoon. This was done with manic patients to calm them. As their core body temperature falls, the brain shifts all of the body's energy into maintaining the temperature. As they have less energy, they calm down. It is said that the patient's lips turned blue and they shivered uncontrollably for hours.
Ephemera: Continuous Bath Time
wrote:
Maybe they jammed straw in where there were gaps in the framing? Kind of like an insulator? Sounds fire-hazard-arriffic to me.
wrote:
Very haunting images of the now forgotten tubs.
I would also look scared stiff trapped in one of those things for what must have been an eternity.
I'll take a nice quick shower instead thanks.
Ephemera: Continuous Bath Time
wrote:
amazing, who dreams this stuff up? the photos were great, kind of creepy until you see the ones that were taken for the magazine. i invision people being left in there as a way to be just rid of them for a while.
Ephemera: Continuous Bath Time
wrote:
Several posts ago there was a discussion of "time of death". For many years it was exactly as the next poster detailed. If a patient was dead the only individual allowed by the state to determine this was a Dr. This led to exactly the situation the family member detailed. Many misunderstandings happened . About 20 years ago the state of OH passed a law that anyone with any medical training could declare someone dead. The ER docs, where I worked, loved this one because nursing homes and hospice patients no longer had to come to the ER to be pronounced. For years the doctors had to leave their patients and go out and get in the back of an ambulance and declare that the patient was in fact dead. Just one of the little wrinkles in a system that is Dr centered.
wrote:
Yes, there have been some of these kinds of tubs left behind in various institutions, although none had the canvas still attached:

http://www.opacity.us/...s/photos/continuous/

For extended treatments, I believe a waterproofing oil was applied to reduce wrinkling.
Ephemera: Continuous Bath Time
wrote:
ohmygod....none of these people look too happy, some of them down right scared. I can't even imagine being in a covered tub like that. I imagine this is what horror movies are made from.
Ephemera: Continuous Bath Time
wrote:
Have you ever come across any of these tubs in any other facility? I think I would look like a big prune when I got out!!
Ephemera: Continuous Bath Time
wrote:
Gorgeous! Would love to see a wallpaper of this image.
wrote:
Interesting read, and nice photos Motts,
its amazing the things they used to think would 'fix'
a person.
Seems it was all just trial and error with most treatments.
Ephemera: Continuous Bath Time