Category Archives: Medical treatments

Medical treatments for insanity were often harsh and punitive. They included the liberal use of narcotics. Doctors and attendants used drugs to sedate patients to make them easier to manage. Physical restraints were often used.

A New Asylum

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Patient Dining Room at West Virginia Hospital for the Insane, 1912

In his first official report, when the asylum was new and Superintendent Oscar Gifford had fewer than 20 patients, his glowing words probably did not fall too fall short of what was actually going on at the Canton Asylum for Insane Indians. “The patients are provided with a healthful, well cooked diet” which included eggs, milk, and fresh vegetables grown in the asylum garden. It is not too difficult to believe that a cook could have provided such meals for the relatively small staff and patient population that existed, and at that point, actually took great pride in her part of the new enterprise.

“The medical treatment has been tonic in character excepting in such cases and at such times, where antispasmodics, eliminants or other special treatments were indicated. . . . .In the treatment of melancholia an unlimited amount of patience and forbearance is required to insure good results, and our work in this regard I think has been a success. The epileptics require constant oversight, but the convulsions have been largely controlled, not alone by sedatives but by tonics . . . .”

Though no one likely wanted to come to the asylum, patients probably did receive far more individual attention from the full-time physician on staff (Dr. John F. Turner) than they would have received at any reservation.

A Sample Eliminant

Various Tonics, courtesy National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health

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A Look at Asylum Food

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Southwestern Lunatic Asylum, early 1890s, courtesy East Tennessee State University Department of Sociology and Anthropology

Superintendents of asylums considered food to be very important, both for patient health and for their morale. Many patients came to facilities somewhat malnourished or with some degree of  sickness, and nourishing food was a primary means of restoring them to physical health. Even healthy patients enjoyed a good meal, and for many patients, meals afforded pleasant breaks in a long day. Superintendents liked to see patients working in asylum gardens: the work gave them exercise and fresh air, occupied their minds, and helped keep expenses down. Some asylum gardens produced surprising amounts of food, though not entirely (or even mostly) through patient labor. The Southwestern Lunatic Asylum, in 1887, produced the following:

— 400 bushels of turnips

— 4,524 ears of green corn

–12,000 heads of cabbage

— 1,102 dozen cucumbers

— 64.5 gallons of peas

These figures do not represent the total harvest from the garden, but do give an idea of its productivity. The superintendent making the report stated that ” . . . the [garden’s] yield is fair under the circumstances . . . . The crops were planted late, and the early part of the season was unfavorable. While the soil of the farm and garden are naturally good, it has been badly cultivated.” At the the end of  fiscal year 1887, the facility had a capacity of 250 but only housed 139 patients.

Animals at the Athens Asylum for the Insane

Patients' Dining Room, West Virginia Hospital for the Insane, 1912

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Valuable Plants

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Arikira Medicine Ceremony, 1908, Edward S. Curtis

Though produce and meat constituted the bulk of regularly preserved and stored food, other plants and herbs were also important to Native Americans. Many modern consumers know the benefits of teas made from chamomile, mint, and and sage, for example, and newcomers to the continent brought medicinal plants with them both on purpose or by accident when seeds hopped rides with cargo. Peoples throughout the world have relied on the plant world for their medicines, and still do where big pharmaceutical companies have not made inroads or aren’t trusted. Patent medicines–typically vegetable extracts with plentiful amounts of alcohol, opium, or cocaine–were popular in the U.S. as early as the 1700s. However, most native peoples and settlers favored plant preparations which had some validated success.

During the Civil War, the Confederate Army relied on plant-based remedies to such an extent that it commissioned a study of herbal medicines, Resources of the Southern Fields and Forests by Francis Porcher, to aid their treatment of soldiers. Doctors used onion and garlic from the allium family for their antibacterial effectiveness with injuries. The reasons behind many herbal remedies weren’t clearly understood at the time, but doctors realized that these plants facilitated recovery for soldiers with wounds and skin infections. Yarrow was an effective blood-stopping agent. Soldiers themselves used American pennyroyal as an insect repellent by rubbing the fresh plant over their skin. Unfortunately, alcohol and opiates continued to hold a powerful position with military doctors, as did harmful mercury-based products like calomel.

Medicinal Recipes circa 1871

Confederate Study of Medicinal Plants

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Indefinite Definitions

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Harry Laughlin, circa 1929

Harry Laughlin, circa 1929

One of the reasons eugenics laws were so disturbing is because their targets were so loosely defined.

Harry Laughlin’s Model Eugenical Sterilization Law in 1914 spelled out just how nebulous the so-called “undesirable” element of a population could be. He proposed to authorize sterilization of what he called the socially inadequate–and the list of these people was long and frightening. Continue reading →

A Notorious Case

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Carrie Buck and Emma Buck, 1924, courtesy of the University of Albany, New York

As eugenics became more popular (see last post), sterilization laws were adopted in many states. One of the most notorious and tragic cases involving forced sterilization was Carrie Buck’s. In 1927, Buck was the first person to be sterilized under Virginia’s 1924 law. She had had an illegitimate daughter, and at 17 years old, joined her own mother at the Virginia Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded. Both were considered feeble-minded and promiscuous, and Carrie’s daugher, Vivian, also received the feeble-minded diagnosis. Carrie’s mother had been involuntarily institutionalized, but Carrie was additionally involuntarily sterilized. Writing for the majority, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes declared that “. . . Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”

Even though sterilization was legal, Carrie’s diagnosis made no sense. She had done well at school, and her daughter  made the honor roll in elementary school, several years later. Obviously, neither of these females was feeble-minded. However, Carrie had been raped by a member of her foster family, and apparently they (with her defense lawyer and the lawyer for the Virginia Colony ) conspired to send her to an institution to help the family avoid shame and to test the state’s sterilization law.

Over the years, institutionalization had been used as a tool by many families to cover up or hide problems in both male and female members, and this classic miscarriage of justice was just one of many instances of its misuse. Carrie’s younger sister was also sterilized after being told she was going to the hospital for appendicitis surgery.

Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. kn Buck v. Bell, courtesy Library of Congress

Virginia State Epileptic Colony Cottage for Feeble-Minded Women

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Insanity Mixed With Other Issues

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A 1926 Poster Urging the Removal of Defective People

Dr. Harry Hummer’s concern about releasing female patients of childbearing age (see last post) shows that he was looking at factors beyond a patient’s ability to live comfortably outside asylum walls. Hummer was neither alone nor unusual in his concern that a former female patient might bear a child who would, in turn, inherit the mother’s problem. (For some reason, he did not voice the same concerns about male patients.) Both anecdotal observation and real scientific research over many years had made it clear that certain genetic traits could be inherited. A fear of inherited insanity was of long standing, and featured as a theme in a number of Victorian novels in which characters refused to marry because of the “taint of insanity” running through their bloodline.

The rising popularity of eugenics (the theory and practice of improving the genetic quality of a population) during the turn of the century and into the 1930s, gave validity to concerns about inheriting madness. Researchers in eugenics tended to believe that many human qualities–good or bad–were inherited rather than the product of environment. Their pseudo-science was well-presented, however, and many people believed that almost anything could be inherited. Even before Hummer became the Canton Asylum for Insane Indians‘ superintendent, Americans had begun to support the  idea of sterilizing so-called “unfit” people in order to stop specific undesirable traits from passing to a new generation. In 1907, the country’s first compulsory sterilization law was passed in Indiana, and targeted “confirmed criminals, idiots, imbeciles, and rapists.” The law was struck down in 1921 but later reinstated in 1927; the second law targeted the “insane, feeble-minded, and epileptic” and stayed on the books until 1974.

Contestants in a Better Baby Contest at the 1931 Indiana State Fair

Eugenic Certificate

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Another Patient’s Fate

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Admission Notes Showing Insane and Epileptics Co-Mingled

Susan Wishecoby was sent to the Canton Asylum for Insane Indians probably because of her epilepsy. She apparently did not know exactly what was wrong with her, and erroneously thought she was going to a hospital. She wrote many letters to the commissioners of Indian Affairs in office during her confinement, but they always referred her requests for discharge to Dr. Harry Hummer.

Wishecoby obviously got better, and worked with the attendants keeping the wards clean. After Commissioner Burke forwarded a letter of Wishecoby’s to Hummer, he replied: “She suffered from epileptic seizures, upon admission, but has not had one, so far as we have observed, for more than three years.” Hummer went on to say that Wishecoby had had delusions which were also in abeyance, and that her “irascible nature” was probably permanent. Hummer added that “her actions here are all that could be desired.”

After making such a case for her recovery, Hummer hastened to add: “…that she is endeavoring to convince us that she should be returned, and, when the restraints of this institution are removed, she may give way.” Then he got to the heart of the matter–she was of childbearing age. “If we are concerned only in treating this individual, we should probably discharge her. If we are concerned also in treating the future generations and preventing the increase of the number of cases of mental disease, we should pause and give this matter deep consideration.”

Records are incomplete, but the letters that remain show that Hummer wrote these words to the commissioner in July, 1925, and that Susan Wishecoby was returned home on September 14, 1925. The intervention of her brother and the reservation superintendent probably came into play, since references are made to them in additional letters around that same time.

An Epileptic Asylum in Abilene, Texas

One Treatment for Epilepsy

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Released for Convenience

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Fort Totten Agency, Dakota Territory, courtesy State Historical Society of North Dakota

Dr. Harry Hummer did not release patients from the Canton Asylum for Insane Indians very often. Though he was willingly to release a few people to their families over the years, Hummer often refused to do so on the grounds that someone who was doing well at the asylum might relapse. However, when he found one or two of his patients extremely inconvenient, he had no problem reversing his usual philosophy. Jerome Court was such a case.

Court was a violent patient who probably had a problem with alcohol and went on drunken sprees that landed him in jail. When he was taken to the Canton Asylum for Insane Indians from the Fort Totten, North Dakota reservation, Court quickly engineered an escape. He was captured and returned to the asylum and escaped once more with the help of an employee who had fallen in love with him. Court was troublesome and dangerous, and Hummer decided he wasn’t insane. “After having held Jerome C. Court since July 12, 1923 to date, and after many mental examinations, I am forced to conclude that he is either “not insane” or that he had practically recovered from any psychotic symptoms by the time he reached here,” Hummer wrote to the Ft. Totten superintendent.

Hummer’s diagnosis is suspect because he had a history of not examining patients, and was faulted for it on many occasions. However, after bickering back and forth with the Fort Totten superintendent and the commissioner of Indian Affairs, Hummer won the day and released Court.

Indian Girls at the Grey Nuns’ School at Fort Totten, courtesy State Historical Society of North Dakota

Hummer Made Exceptions

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Images of Melancholia and Recovery

Though Dr. Harry Hummer did not seem to consider anyone ever completely cured of insanity (see last two posts), he was sometimes willing to let patients return home if they could be cared for properly by family. In this, he probably had some genuine concerns for the patient. He was likely aware of the many instances in which Native Americans had lost property due to unscrupulous outsiders, and he knew that some of his patients had allotments that needed protection. Hummer also felt that certain conditions required care that might be too much for naive family members who didn’t understand the burdens of round-the-clock attention.

When convinced that patients would do well under family care, Hummer did sometimes release them willingly. In 1911, Lucy Gladstone came to the Canton Asylum for Insane Indians because of a suicide attempt. For several months, Hummer treated her for depression and some sort of seizures. Gladstone grew better and worked in the sewing room and with the laundry; she was tidy and quiet, and gradually came out of her depression. Within the year, Hummer considered her so much recovered that he released her to the care of her brother and felt confident enough to let her travel to his home without an escort.

Patients Working in Laundry Room at Texas State Lunatic Asylum

Patients in Sewing Room at Willard State Hospital for the Insane

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Dr. Hummer’s Views on Curability

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Alienists Sought Early Intervention for Insanity

One reason that people throughout time have hesitated to admit to mental illness is because the diagnosis was frequently a lifelong sentence (see last post). Unlike physical illnesses which were cured, people with mental illness were stigmatized long after symptoms subsided or a problematic episode cleared up. One reason alienists and asylums were embraced so eagerly was because they promised a new age of cures. Alienists were so confident that the right environment and treatment could cure insanity that a “cult of curability” developed which waned only when asylums became so crowded that effective treatment became impossible. When alienists could no longer deal only with acute, new cases of insanity, the prospect of a cure became bleaker.

At the Canton Asylum for Insane Indians, Dr. Harry Hummer almost embraced a cult of incurability. He rarely pronounced an individual well, and his letters are full of misgivings about letting patients return home even when their symptoms abated. He wrote to the commissioner of Indian Affairs about Agnes Caldwell: “I recommend that no steps be taken looking to her release, because it is almost certain that she would soon come to grief and have to be returned.” In 1919 he wrote about Allen Owl: “[He] is well-behaved and trusted with parole privileges of the grounds and an occasional pass to town to the picture shows, in addition to which he was permitted to work with neighboring farmers this season, earning about one hundred and fifty or sixty dollars. This, however, does not mean that he could or would do as well were he discharged . . . I believe that it would be but a comparatively short time before there would be a return of more active symptoms which would necessitate his re-incarceration in an institution for the insane.”

Acute Insanity as Cause of Death

Prominent Alienist, Luther Bell

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