The Prominent Insane

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Mary Todd Lincoln

Insane asylums were not just for the poor and friendless. Though they were more typically cared for at home through private physicians and attendants, wealthy people also went to insane asylums. Because they were paying patients, they usually received better food and more attentive care. Here are a few patients who stayed in public insane asylums:

Zelda Fitzgerald, wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald — McClean Asylum

Ezra Pound- poet — St. Elizabeths

Stanley McCormick, family fortune from McCormick harvesting machine — St. Elizabeths

Mary Todd Lincoln, widow of Abraham Lincoln — Bellevue Asylum

Vincent Van Gogh, artist, Saint-Paul-de-Mausole Asylum, Saint Remy, France

Romeo Singer, founder of Singer Sewing Machines — Amityville Insane Asylum

Woody Guthrie, singer — Greystone Park State Hospital

Ezra Pound

Zelda Fitzgerald

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Better Treatment for the Insane

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Devices for Physical Control, courtesy Medscape

Early treatments for insanity left much to be desired, but they were infinitely preferable to old-style treatments. In 1916, several authors gave an overview of the progress within the field; they noted that by the mid-1800s, treatment for insanity had begun to include non-medical procedures. Within the non-medical area of treatment, practitioners began to sharply diverge from former practices.

Dr. Benjamin Rush (1745-1813) believed that the people in charge of caring for the insane should control them through fear or intimidation. Rush said, “The first object of a physician when he enters a cell or chamber of the average person should be  to catch his eye and look him out of countenance.”

Dr. Benjamin Rush

Rush endorsed the use of straitjackets and the tranquilizing chair (see post from 3/30/10), along with depriving a stubborn patient of his “customary pleasant food.” An unusual way through which Rush sought obedience was to “pour cold water under the coat sleeve so that it may descend to the arm pits.”

Illustration in Former Asylum Patient's Book

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Sunstroke and Insanity

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Insane Asylum

Many early doctors believed that sunstroke could cause traumatic insanity. They thought it was due to inflammation caused by the great heat of the sun, but also considered it possible that anyone working in a hot environment–like cooks–could fall victim to it. If a mental patient seemed to have no congenital or hereditary reasons for idiocy or dementia, his or her condition was sometimes attributed to sunstroke in childhood or infancy.

Early insanity from sunstroke typically presented itself in an unsteady gait, optimism, and delusions of exaltation. Chronic, non-progressive sunstroke insanity had other symptoms, like sudden suspicions and one or two fixed delusions. Often patients would become violent and be sent to an asylum.

In reality, sunstroke occurs when the body becomes overheated and can’t cool itself–it is a life-threatening condition that can lead to death and organ damage if not immediately treated. Sunstroke can kill its victims several weeks after the event, usually as a result of heart and liver problems.

Arkansas State Lunatic Asylum

Northampton State Lunatic Asylum

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Misunderstanding Convulsions

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Treatment of Insanity, 1846

Doctors didn’t understand what caused many psychological problems or mental illnesses, and usually relied on a “best guess” approach to anything without an immediate cause and effect. A doctor at the neurological unit of Boston City Hospital discussed the case of a boy experiencing convulsions. He had shown signs of a cerebral injury at birth, and later developed grand mal seizures. He was also bitten by a dog as a child, and began to have convulsions that usually occurred when he saw a dog. The doctor felt that emotion (in this case, fear of a dog), was the precipitating factor in the patient’s attacks.

The doctor brought up other instances of an emotional cause for convulsions. A 17-year-old girl suffered her first grand mal attack within two hours of being forced to break off an engagement. The doctor also described another physician’s initial treatment for a 12-year-old girl  who had had cranial trauma and then seizures earlier in life: a regime of high enemas. Later, when the girl was 18, the doctors tried a “nine months trial of dehydration” which made her condition worse.

 

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Insanity Diagnosis

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Insane Epileptic Patient Eliza Whitfield, age 28 in 1889

Epilepsy always puzzled alienists (early psychiatrists) because of the strange behavior victims exhibited in contrast to the rationality they often also displayed between episodes. The American Journal of Insanity was full of articles about epilepsy, and continued to explore the topic after it became the American Journal of Psychiatry. One article in 1923 explored the question of psychotic symptoms in epilepsy.

The writers noted that patients were often described as having a “typical epileptic disposition.” An author they referenced described this disposition: “The whole life of the epileptic shows hatred. It bursts forth in all its brutality on the slightest provocation; the horrid the brutal, and all that is evil…”

It is no wonder that with this prejudice against them, many epileptics were confined to insane asylums based on their behavior during and after convulsions.

 

Admission Notes Showing Epilepsy, courtesy Gutenberg.org

An Epileptic Boy, courtesy Gutenberg.org

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How Does the Bureau of Indian Affairs Run?

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John Collier

John Collier’s article about Amerindians (see last post) laid the blame for much of the Indians’ misery on the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Indians were now full citizens of the United States, Collier wrote, but unlike all other citizens, were completely under the control of Congress through the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). The BIA controlled Indian property valued at $1,650,000,000, Indian income, and even their persons to a great extent.

The BIA could force Indian children to go to schools hundreds of miles away from home, “enforce an unpublished penal code” that allowed them to arrest Indians at will, censor Indians’ religious observances, and nullify an Indian’s last will and testament unless it had been previously approved by the BIA.

Worst of all, said Collier, the BIA “makes accounting to no agency juristic, legislative, and administrative.” It acted as a government unto itself and had a monopoly of control on reservations. He did note that the agency was finally having to account for itself through a survey being conducted at the time of his writing. This accounting resulted in the Meriam Report, discussed in posts on May 12-19.

Native American Farmer on Flathead Reservation , circa 1920, courtesy BIA

Sioux Men in Traditional Dress, 1909, courtesy Library of Congress

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The Dismal State of American Indians

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Council of Indians, Pine Ridge, 1881, courtesy Library of Congress

John Collier wrote an article in 1929, entitled “Amerindians,” which used measured language and concrete statistics to paint a sober picture of American Indians’ well-being. According to Collier’s figures, the number of Indians who lived in the U.S. had fallen from approximately 825,000 at the time of America’s discovery by Europeans, to 350,000 at the time of his writing.

Day school was mandated for children aged six to eighteen, and they had to go to boarding schools away from their families if there were no acceptable schools nearby. Collier noted that “the food allowance for the children is eleven cents a day, supplemented in a few cases by provender from school gardens and dairies.”

The 1925 census showed a 62% increase (28.5 per 1,000) in the death rate of Indians over the previous five years. This figure showed that the Indians’ death rate had surpassed their birth rate. The Bureau of Indian Affairs disputed the census findings, but according to the article, admitted that the Indian death rate was about 95% higher than the general death rate.

On the Indian Reservation, courtesy Library of Congress

Graduating Class, Carlisle Indian School, 1894, courtesy Library of Congress

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Indian Reform and Muckrackers

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Sunset Magazine, which published muckraking articles

The Indian Rights Association was founded in 1882, and the organization lobbied to influence policy that would benefit Indian acculturation. It also monitored the Bureau of Indian Affairs and tried to keep tabs on Indian living conditions. In 1924, the organization began to issue a monthly publication called Indian Truth, and collaborated with the American Indian Defense Association on an expose of Indian exploitation in Oklahoma.

After that, article after article about the government’s mistreatment or exploitation of Indians appeared in magazines. Titles like “The Red Slaves of Oklahoma,” “The Deplorable State of Our Indians,” and “Red Tragedies” made it plain that their writers didn’t intend to let anybody off the hook. Though the Bureau of Indians Affairs largely ignored the articles–except to defend itself against their charges–the publicity helped bring the Indians’ grievances and substandard quality of life before the public.

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Understanding the American Indian Girl

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Cree Indian Girls, 1871, courtesy Library of Congress

In 1928, the Department of the Interior put out a pamphlet entitled “The Social Heritage of the Indian Girl.” Prepared at the request of the commissioner of Indian Affairs, the information in it was an attempt to help the pamphlet’s audience (mainly educators) see that the problematic behaviors of female Indian students had much to do with culture, rather than active misbehavior or backwardness.

What is the Indian girl like? asked the narrator, and went on to list the questions many “interested” parties typically asked about them. Some of these were:

— Why are Indian girls so often silent when they could explain if they would?

— Why can we never depend upon them to do things on time?

— Why are they so slow?

— Why are they always borrowing others possessions and giving theirs away?

— When will they ever learn to reason things out instead of just following their impulses?

To counter these questions, the pamphlet went through each one and gave sometimes patronizing explanations. It explained silence, for instance, by commencing with a hypothetical situation in which a little reservation girl first came to a classroom. When the teacher asked her a question, the little girl couldn’t speak. To think that an important person representing the Great White Father wanted information from her! Instead of replying, the little girl could only hang her head.

Some information contained in the pamphlet was useful, particularly a discussion concerning the importance of the group (clan or tribe), rather than the individual, within Indian society.

Puyallup Woman, Minnie Richards, 1899, courtesy Library of Congress

Paiute Indian Girls, circa 1914, courtesy Library of Congress

 

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Oblivious at the Indian Bureau

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The Meriam Report (see last two posts) faced a large bureaucracy and insular personnel. An Interior department report reprinted in 1926 (the same year the Meriam Commission began its survey) stated: “The two officials most directly charged by law with the administration of Indian Affairs, the Secretary of the Interior and the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, are sincere friends of the Indians and can be depended upon to guard and promote most faithfully every interest of our Government wards.”

Edgar B. Meritt, courtesy Library of Congress

The report* went on to say that there was considerable propaganda going on against the Indian Bureau, which was instigated by selfish interests. The writer, assistant commissioner, Edgar Meritt, attributed the selfish interests to land grafters. He added, “They are using the services of white agitators and some shrewd mixed-blood Indians who are willing to sacrifice the less fortunate of their own race for personal gain.”

*The American Indian and Government Indian Administration, Bulletin 12

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