Tag Archives: Mary Todd Lincoln

Arbitrary Commitment

Elizabeth Packard Being Taken to an Asylum Against Her Will, courtesy National Library of Medicine

Elizabeth Packard Being Taken to an Asylum Against Her Will, courtesy National Library of Medicine

Alienists were notorious for their self-confident belief that they knew what was best for anyone with mental illness. In an essay from the July,1868 issue of the American Journal of Insanity, the (anonymous) author makes a case for doing away with legal procedures for commitment: “. . . other diseases, except those of a highly contagious type, do not call for civil interference nor court publicity.

We do not demand a commission or an inquest to decide whether a man has a fever raging into delirium, or whether he has a general paralysis, or whether a surgeon shall be permitted to amputate his limbs or trepan his skull.”

The writer went on to point out that if anyone saw a person sick or wounded in the street, “we take him forthwith to the nearest hospital, without stopping to canvass our legal right to restrain him of his liberty.”

Charles Guiteau Said He Was Temporarily Insane When He Assassinated President Garfield

Charles Guiteau Said He Was Temporarily Insane When He Assassinated President Garfield

The author lamented that a patient stricken with insanity was sometimes met with a suspicious relative who wasn’t convinced of his illness even though his other relatives were. Because of this suspicion, the patient, “against the wishes and judgment of the rest,” was then liable to the “questioning of the law and its ministers.” This then led to publicity, which might be detrimental to the patient’s recovery.

Though She Had a Trial, Mary Todd Lincoln Was Involuntarily Committed to an Asylum

Though She Had a Trial, Mary Todd Lincoln Was Involuntarily Committed to an Asylum

 

Most people, of course, would not want to be committed involuntarily to an insane asylum, and welcomed legal safeguards to prevent it. It is amazing to consider how differently alienists and laypeople considered the matter–it almost certainly boiled down to who was in control of the situation.

Pursuing an Agenda

American Journal of Insanity

Asylum superintendents tended to support each other and their profession, and presented a united front to the public. Though they published studies and treatment-oriented articles in the American Journal of Insanity (AJA) and other medical organs, the AJA in particular reflected much of their philosophy.

In a July, 1868 article, “Admission to Hospitals for the Insane,” the author contended that it was especially unkind to make the insane endure a public hearing on their sanity. “If we find a man sick or wounded in the street, we take him forthwith to the nearest hospital, without stopping to canvass our legal right to restrain him of his liberty,” the author stated.

With the insane, however, relatives force publicity by requiring “an inquisition to establish the delirium or the lunacy,” the article continued. He said that there was no more reason why a magistrate or civil authority should inquire into treatment [for an insane person] than there was to “rescue a patient from the hands of a skillful surgeon who is binding him to an operating table to perform an amputation.”

This article is only one instance of an ongoing disagreement between the psychiatric profession and private citizens about the value of admitting (or coercing) patients into asylums without due process.

Amariah Brigham, founder of the AJA

Mary Todd Lincoln (Judged Insane by a Jury After a 10-Minute Deliberation)

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The Prominent Insane

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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