Lunatic Asylums 1
Tie them keeper in a tether,
Let them stare and stink together:
Both are apt to be unruly,
Lash them daily, lash them duly,
Though 'tis hopeless to reclaim them,
Scorpion Rods perhaps may tame them.
Jonathan Swift
A few towns had towers called Narrentürme or "fools' tower".
The "Tower of Fools", where the city sent their insane during
the late 18th Century, still stands in Vienna.
Constructed in 1784, the Lunatics’ Tower became a showplace.
Elaborately decorated, it contained square rooms in which
the staff lived and the patients were housed in the spaces
between the walls of the rooms and the wall of the tower.
The winding corridors seem to echo with the pain of
the 140 inmates who were chained to the walls
and provided only with straw mats for sleeping.
Treated as animals and considered dangerous,
they were put on display for public amusement.
Iron cuffs and collars permitted just enough movement
to allow patients to feed themselves but not enough to lie
down at night, so they were forced to sleep upright.
The phrase snake pit — slang for “mental hospital”— stems
from these early custodial days, when the insane were thrown
into a serpent-filled hole to shock them back to their senses.
Bake-well relates an instance from his practice where
"a maniac confined in a room over my own . . . bellowed
like a wild beast, and shook his chain almost constantly
for several days and nights. . . . I therefore got up,
took a hand whip, and gave him a few smart stripes upon
the shoulder. . . . He disturbed me no more."
The Darwin-Coxe Machine was used to swing the insane
until they were quiet and by "increasing the velocity of the swing,
the motion be[ing] suddenly reversed every six or eight minutes,
pausing occasionally, and stopping its circulation suddenly:
the consequence is, an instant discharge of the contents of
the stomach, bowels, and bladder, in quick succession."
Around the mid-1700s, the Dutch Dr. Boerhaave invented
the “gyrating chair” and it became a popular tool in Europe
and the United States. Spinning at speeds of up to 100 revolutions
a minute, it was intended to shake up the blood and tissues
of the body to restore equilibrium increase the blood supply to the brain.
Even the obstinate cases could not long resist its powers:
if necessary it could be "employed in the dark, where,
from unusual noises, smells, or other powerful agents,
acting forcibly on the senses, its efficacy might
be amazingly increased."
In practice, it rendered the patient unconscious without any
recorded successes. There were also reports of blood oozing
from their mouths, ears and noses.
The suggestion by Dutch physician Hermann Boerhaave
that near-drowning be employed for its salutary effects gave birth
to a variety of ingenious devices designed to produce this effect:
hidden trapdoors in corridors designed to plunge the unsuspecting
lunatic into a "bath of surprise" as well as coffins with holes
drilled in their lids, into which the patient could be fastened
before being lowered under water.
Hermann Boerhaave (1668-1738), the renowned medical teacher
of Leiden (The Netherlands), said, “The greatest Remedy for
it [mental illness] is to throw the Patient unwarily into the Sea,
and to keep him under Water as long as he can possibly bear
without being quite stifled.”
Benjamin Rush devised the tranquilizer chair- the patient
was strapped into the chair and a wooden hood
was placed over his head. The goal was to calm the patient
by restricting his sensory input.
Johann Reil coined the word “psychiatry” (healing of the soul).
Prior to this, practitioners were known as "alienists".
Reil's “psychic treatments” included massage, whipping,
flogging and opium as well as throwing patients into water
while at the same time firing cannons to restore them to their senses.
He also invented the hollow wheel. Patients were placed inside
for 36-48 hours and could either remain stationary or run forward or backward.
- tbc -
State of the Art treatments
a history of mental illness and treatments
*
Bipolar Living - 10 Great Links
One of the first things I knew after I was diagnosed
was how much I wanted to learn more. It was kind
of comforting to have a name, a handle, some sort of
external validation for the difference between my
experience of life and those of most of the people
around me, but what the hell did it mean?
How was I different? What could- or even should - I do
about it? What were the implications for me, now and
in the years to come?
It soon came clear to me that everyone's experience
of bipolar living is different - symptoms and histories
as unique as fingerprints... but there are also commonalities.
The more one learns, the more one is able to
define one's own condition and to respond
accordingly. These links can open doors to
all kinds of perspectives and useful facts.
Black Dog Institute - a great place to start
Bipolar - the basics
Bipolar Home - a wide range of useful topics
Bipolar disorder - it's serious
Bipolar - factsheets on many aspects of bipolar living
Bipolar - Symptoms, Causes, Care
The Bipolar Advantage
Does-BiPolar-get-worse-with-age?
The Bipolar Experience - a collection of different perspectives
A Guide to Bipolar Websites
*
Lobotomies
LOBOTOMY from the Greek lobos,
meaning lobes of the brain,
and tomos, meaning cut.
meaning lobes of the brain,
and tomos, meaning cut.
In England at the beginning of the nineteenth century there were,
perhaps, a few thousand 'lunatics' in a variety of disparate
institutions. By 1900, that figure had grown to about 100,000.
In the 50 years between 1840 and 1890, the population of
hospitalized mentally ill in the US grew from 2,561 to 74,000
patients. The number of mental hospitals, private and public,
leaped from 18 in 1840 to 139 in 1880.
Facilities built with the best of intentions were over-crowded
and getting worse, with no cures on hand or in sight.
In the era before psychiatric drugs – when state institutions were
over-flowing with mentally ill patients often living in snakepit
conditions – hospitals, families, and the press were eager to embrace
"miracle" cures like the "ice pick" lobotomy.
It was a doctor named Walter Jackson Freeman who stepped
forward with this solution. Freeman's motto, "lobotomy gets
them home," opened the door at state-run facilities.
Lobotomy is defined as a type of brain surgery that involves
the removal of a portion of the brain. Doctors use an instrument
called a leucotome. The open wire loop was retracted to cut the
bundles of nerve fibers connecting the frontal cortex to the thalamus.
Freeman developed a quick and easy method of lobotomizing a patient:
the transorbital lobotomy, which involved thrusting a surgical knife through the eye sockets and “swiggl[ing] it around,” as Dr. Louis Hatcher, of Georgia, once so eloquently explained.
For his first transorbital lobotomies, Walter Freeman used
an actual icepick from his kitchen. Freeman performed about
3,500 lobotomies during his career, of which 2,500 were his
ice-pick procedure.
Out of 50,000 people who received lobotomies in the United States
between 1949 and 1952, about 10,000 had transorbital lobotomies
and the rest were prefrontal lobotomies.
Surgeons received fees as high as $1500 for the so-called miracle
operation. U.S. newspapers reported that lobotomies were no more
invasive than a visit to the dentist’s office.
Women were subjected to lobotomy more frequently than men.
The available data shows that they made up 74% of cases
from 1948-1952.
Lobotomized patients often acted very primitively when it came
to sexual matters. Freeman advised spouses to enjoy the “exhilarating
if unconventional experience,” though he also noted that learning
self-defense techniques might come in handy.
One of the best-known women patients was a successful film actress
from Seattle named Frances Farmer. Her story has been the subject
of several films, as well as a song by Nirvana called "Frances Farmer
Will Have Her Revenge on Seattle".
Rosemary Kennedy, who's siblings included Robert (Bobby)
above and JFK underwent a lobotomy in 1941 which left her
incapacitated and institutionalized from 1949 until her death
in 2005,was another.
Around 1950, protests to the lobotomy crystalized. It turned out
that only 1/3 of the lobotomies worked. This fraction is equal to
the number of patients that would get better on their own.
Be that as it may, an article in Wired magazine states that
lobotomies were performed “well into the 1980s” in the
“United States, Britain, Scandinavia and several western
European countries.”
50 ways to say 'You're Crazy'
actually, over 150...some old, some new,
some that are kinda funny
& some that mean other things too!
"What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet."
*
crazy 1570s, "diseased, sickly," from craze + -y (2). Meaning "full of cracks
or flaws" is from 1580s; that of "of unsound mind, or behaving as so" is
from 1610s. Jazz slang sense "cool, exciting" attested by 1927.
or flaws" is from 1580s; that of "of unsound mind, or behaving as so" is
from 1610s. Jazz slang sense "cool, exciting" attested by 1927.
bluto
a head case
beeper (bipolar)
schizo
mentally interesting
psych case
nutbag
cuckoo clock
off my rocker
psycho
loony
nuts
crazy
bats
bojangle
bonkers
buggy
bugging
certifiable
squirrelly
manic
unhinged
wing nut
'flicted
cock-eyed
crackpot
crunk
duck soup
tetched
dippy
flipped out
jumped the couch
lunachick
lunched
nerts
potty
shell
wig out
wiggity-wack
nutjob
mentally challenged
disturbed
screw loose
mental
demented
weird
Freak
Retard
spastic
spaz
split personality
nutcase
nutter
halfwit
bimbo
strange
bonkers
brain damage
oddball
brain dead
out of it
thick
head banging
head case
crackers
idiot
troubled
twisted
demented
deranged
irrational
disorientated
loony
unstable
disturbed
psycho
lunatic
psychopath
retard
dizzy
mental
scary
schizo
wacky
wally
dulally
weird
screw loose
weirdo
flid
fruit cake
f*ck knuckle
brainsick
daft
demented
disordered
insane
lunatic
maniac
maniacal
moonstruck
off
touched
unbalanced
unsound
wrong
bonkers
cracked
daffy
gaga
bananas
batty
buggy
cuckoo
fruity
loco
crackers
crackpot
eccentric
crank
ding-a-ling
kook
screwball
nut case
lulu head
wack job
sick
demented
zoid
wacko
looney
looney Bird
jacko
crack head
barking
touched
daft
bat shit crazy
Britney Spears
doe
funky monkey
goober
head case
j-cat
looper
psycho-bitch
quack
seven thirty
wall out
radio rental (Cockney for 'mental')
not all there
doolally
off your head
off your trolley
round the twist
up the pole
buckwilin'
on one
Patrick Swayze (Cockney for 'crazy')
Chicken Jalfrezi (Cockney for 'crazy')
apeshit
barmy
bent
deranged
gone
goofy
haywire
kook
mad
moron
screwy
schizoid
schizy
screwy
sick
sicko
sociopath
stark raving mad
touched
twisted
unbalanced
unglued
bedlamite
unhinged
wigged out
pixilated
damaged goods
high strung
looney-tunes
basket case
non compos mentis
feel lucky? learn more at these fine sources
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1925070/
http://www.alphadictionary.com/slang/?term=crazy&beginEra=&endEra=&clean=true&submitsend=Search
http://onlineslangdictionary.com/thesaurus/words+meaning+crazy,+insane,+weird,+strange+person.html
http://onlineslangdictionary.com/thesaurus/words+meaning+to+act+wild,+strange,+crazy.html
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=crazy&searchmode=none
*
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