Portrait of An Insane Woman, by Hugh Welch Diamond, 1852

Treatment for mental disorders was generally hit-or-miss in most insane asylums, and many superintendents embarked on experimental procedures simply because there weren’t any reliable ways to help patients. Some treatments were more bizarre than others, and unfortunately, some of the treatments aimed at female patients were based on mistaken physiology-based causes of insanity.

Many doctors in the nineteenth century believed that the reproductive organs caused insanity, and removed female patients’ ovaries to abate symptoms that seemed to appear during the menses. (Hysteria was another type of female insanity attributed to physiology.) Some doctors applied electrical current to a patient’s uterus, or injected the vagina with hot water. For women who masturbated–often considered a cause of insanity–doctors ensured that the patient would find it extremely painful by cauterizing her clitoris.

Feeble-minded Subjects for Sterilization, courtesy Truman State University

At the Canton Asylum for Insane Indians, neither superintendent favored these extreme treatments. However, Dr. Harry Hummer firmly believed that female patients in their child-bearing years should not be released unless they could be sterilized.

Since he had no means to do that, he decided to keep many female patients who were otherwise candidates for discharge. Hummer was sometimes overruled in these types of decisions if a woman had a strong advocate, but his policy was most often unchallenged.

Account of A Woman Declared Insane Apparently After a Fortune-Telling