1,591 Comments for Glenn Dale Hospital

Now that I think of it, at the very end of one of the wings was a group of rooms that were different than the rest, I forgot in what way, but I remember the balconies out back were sectioned off from the rest, and there was a fence around the outside edge. This could've been an area for psychiatric patients with TB...

Remember - anyone can get TB, even people with mental illness. There are a number of sites that will tell you about TB hospitals back at the turn of the last century that had wards exclusively for people with mental illness, and in some of those places ECT was used because it was considered state of the art at the time. A mouth gag is a small rubber device that is placed between your back teeth - dentists still use them so you don't have to hold your mouth open for a long procedure. People sometimes received insulin and/or Metrazol as well as ECT or in place of ECT and either way, the idea is that you know in advance that you are going to cause the person to have a seizure, so you want to protect their teeth from crunching together and breaking and keep them from biting their tongue. You can't be sticking your hand in the mouth of someone who is having a seizure unless you don't value your fingers. Trust me on this. :-)

Most tongue and teeth protectors were either rubber tubing you bit down on, gauze-wrapped/padded tongue protectors placed between the teeth, or "mouth gags."

You know what, ~Me, I think you're on to something...it could have been for patients that couldn't talk and stuff because they didn't have those electronic buttons that you press nowadays to call a nurse.

Maybe......
They gave those with mouth gags, tap bells for the ability to call the nurses?

How often do tap bells at front desks beak? I know if you slap your hand hard enough on them they hurt like a mofo, but I have never broken one. Just wondering why they would store alot of tapbells.

In the 1960s and 1970s, Glendale was an institution for people with mental retardation. Back then, it was common to restrain people who were spastic, so mouth gags were frequently used.

Could the mouth gags have possibly been used in the case of a seizure? I'm not doubting Lynne, but it would seem that a TB hospital wouldn't have much use for ECT.

anyone know anything about the old Mt Wilson Hospital (another branch of the Maryland Tuberculosis Hospital, located in the Pikeville/Garrison area) I worked on the grounds after it closed and before it was turned into a retirement home, but I never saw the inside or learned much about its history.

there's another playground behind the children's hospital. me n some buddies found on our way out. there's a rusted swing set and slide and some see saws that we took turns riding

right under that stage, on the bottom foor, thats where we found the morgue

me and the boys found a lot of old medical equipment on the top floor of the main hospital in cabinets just like those

thats nothin, in the building there are rooms filled with nothin but ivy...its pretty interesting

Me and my friends have explored every floor of the main and children hospitals of glen dale. Unfortunately on our last trip we were caught by the cops [information removed as per site policy] The hospital is kinda fun the first time you go in but then the novelty wares off and by the end of our trips up there it was just boring. but i still recomend everyone goes up there once though.

Stephan,

Usually doctors use laryngoscopes to intubate. Back in the days of TB asylums, intubation wasn't really done much at all; Lynne was probably right, as usual. =)

If you look at the Pennhurst galleries on the "elpeecho" website, there's a movie there with film clips from "Suffer the little children" and a guy with a camera in Pennhurst, set to Pink Floyd's "Brain Damage." It's well done, I thought.