Fellow bloggers, may we all take a moment of silence to thank Google for an endless supply of blog topics.
Insert moment of silence here.
Okay, moving on. Due to circumstances beyond my control, I have been more or less housebound and will be for the foreseeable future. Going nuts is on my mind about now. Thanks to our friends at Google, looky here what I found online. It's a transcript of a survey done at the Oregon State Insane Asylum in the 1890s. The facility may sound familiar if you are a fan of the movie, 'One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest' - part of it was filmed there.
Back to the form - labeled 'Causes of Insanity', it lists lots and lots of causes, parses them by gender, and totes 'em up. There is no other information, such as who was doing the evaluating. Was some doctor rendering an opinion on each one, or were they just asking the inmates, "to what do we owe the pleasure"? And what exactly qualifies as 'insane'? Are they just worn out by the seven rugrats tugging on their skirt all day, or are there human heads in the fridge?
Some of the causes listed are sad. Some are scary. And forgive me, some are hilarious. In a sad way.
We have a total of more than 600 individuals admitted over a two year period (1894-1896). Close to half (275) are listed as cause of insanity 'unknown'. Picture a doctor standing with a clipboard at the front door, giving the poor sods a once-over and a shrug, ticking off a box on the form on his clipboard, then waving them inside to be measured for their backless gown and their straight jacket.
Far distant second place under causes are intemperance (31) and epilepsy (30). One must admire the refined sensibilities of the Victorian era - isn't 'intemperance' so much more pleasant a word than 'drunk'? And p.s. since when was epilepsy considered a form of insanity? Yikes. Also note the men far outnumbered the women in both of these categories. Don't worry, ladies, you'll get to even the score when we get to 'uterine disease' (11-0) and 'menopause' (6-0).
Speaking of substance abuse, we have opium and morphine addicts, plus a handful of overachievers listed for 'morphine and cocaine'.
Next up with 25 diagnoses is 'heredity', fairly evenly split between men (10) and women (15). [insert mother-in-law jokes here] But the real winner is 24 cases due to 'masturbation'. And yes, it was 24-0 for the gents. Once again I am wondering how this whole check-in thing worked back then. Did they just roll up in the taxi carriage and kick the dude to the curb? Leave him on the front porch in the middle of the night like an orphaned babe? Was there any proof required - palm checking, vision tests? Was there any resistance, or were the poor suckers looking forward to the privacy?
17 patients were admitted due to 'injury to head'. 16 of these were men. Go figure.
The balance of causes listed are scattered among dozens of categories. We have some due to legitimate (sounding) illness such as typhoid, meningitis, scarlatina, and la grippe (flu). This may have been because the asylum also served as a traditional hospital. I hope that is the case. I would hate to think one went to the hospital to be treated for pneumonia and wound up coming home minus part of your frontal lobe.
There are a handful listing religious causes: 'religion' in general; 'spiritualism'; 'Christian Science' specifically; and one guy with the combo platter of 'religion AND injury'. I am thinking snake handler, maybe?
Of course there were a few ladies admitted for causes related to having kids. They included the exotic-sounding 'puerperal trouble', which today we call post-partum depression. Childbirth was still called 'childbirth' back then. Other causes of insanity listed that may or may not have been related to childbearing: 'brain softening', 'fright', 'worry', 'loss of sleep', 'mental strain', and 'overwork'.
Lastly, here are a few head-scratchers:
- One fellow was admitted for literally smoking his brains out - cause of insanity listed as 'tobacco'.
- 'exposure and solitude' - not one or the other, but both. As this was in the Pacific Northwest, maybe lost their way looking for a Starbucks?
- 'overstudy' - gotta be a college freshman.
- 'disappointment in love' - 2 women, 1 man. List does not indicate whether they were part of the same love triangle.
- 'domestic trouble' - 4 men, 6 women. I found this strange as it is usually when there are not enough women that trouble begins. . .
Just goes to show, it's all fun and games until someone gets committed for 'disappointment in love'. This list was amusing to me until I started looking at the grim pictures and my imagination got the better of me. Asylum as haven, or prison? Peaceful refuge, or waking nightmare? My gut (and my recent personal experience) tells me it was an unpleasant mixture of both.
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I feel so sorry for these people. From what I've read, doctors knew hardly anything at all about mental illness back then. I wonder what their diagnoses would be if they lived in 2018? I'd bet that some of them weren't mentally ill at all.
The line listing people whose cause of illness was grief affected me the most. Imagine being separated from everyone and everything you loved at a time like that!
I did giggle at the tobacco one, though. What an odd mental image that is.
I'm still curious how many of these were voluntary.
I found this both hilarious, and also, sad. Because I can imagine people being locked up who totally don't belong in such a place, because they were too much trouble for their families.
Disappointment in love... now there's a writing prompt!
The diagnosis standards just didn't seem very stringent, did they?
Wow, this is so interesting. And unsettling too.
I'm afraid to apply similar research to present-day commitment statistics.