Conceptions Of Madness In The Middle Ages

Part one spans over the years 1750-1900, and elaborates on the developments of varying treatments that were administered to mental patients during this time. Whitaker writes of methods like dunking the patients in water, bloodletting, the tranquilizer

← Doyle, William. The French Revolution: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press, Inc. 2001

In this article, the incarceration of the mentally ill is encouraged because it is safer than keeping them in mental institutions. It claims that mental institutions are extremely dangerous by their very nature and the nurses there are trained to treat the mentally ill, not to keep them from hurting themselves or other people. In prisons however, the

The conditions of the prisons and asylums of the 1800’s were archaic even for that era but by today's standards are criminal in themselves. The march 26th, 1880 edition of The New York Times ran a story titled Out of an Insane Asylum, which described one patient's first hand treatment. According to the story that The New York Times ran this particular patient was beaten on several occasions seemingly at the whim of the people in charge (The New York

Before the reform movement, prisoners and the mentally ill were treated cruelly under the prison system. Up until the 1800s, it was believed that mental illnesses meant some form of “religious punishment or demonic possession”. Most people had negative feelings toward the mentally ill during the years up to the reform movement. Hippocrates actually was well known to treat the mentally ill. He’d change their lives to change their feeling or he’d use certain substances to help these people. In the times of the middle ages, most people believed that the mentally ill were in need of religion. In the 1800s, people could be hanged for a variety of reasons, ranging from murder, to arson, to forgery, or even for being an single mother hiding a stillborn child. Almost all the mentally ill people were jailed in 1800s America. Others were hidden by family members (Brief). In this time period, the New York

One of the most controversial topics affecting American society has been the matter of caring for the mentally ill. Early treatments of the mentally ill resulted in cruel and unconventional punishments; however, during the mid-1800s, attitudes about the mentally ill began to transition into more humane treatments. The earlier treatments were the abuse of drugs, electroshock therapy, and lobotomies, which, physicians later discovered, could cause hallucinations, delusions, and other side effects. These treatments can be seen as methods of torture and punishment, rather than methods of curing. As time went on, the treatments transformed into the appropriate methods that our used in today’s society, like therapy.

Through the Middle Ages and until the establishment of asylums, treatments for mental illness were offered by “humanistic physicians, medical astrologers, apothecaries, and folk or traditional healers” (MacDonald 175). Aside from secular exorcisms, prayers, charms, amulets, and other mystical treatments were available. Sedatives during the 17th century consisted of opium grains to “ease the torment” of mental illness (MacDonald 190).

For centuries societies have been superstitious and afraid towards mental illness; mainly due to a lack of knowledge. While there were “cures and treatments” for individuals that were deemed insane many were sent to either prisons or asylums. The conditions of these facilities were unsanitary, the physical and sexual abuse was frequent, and the staff was not properly trained to care for patients. Patients were also chained, caged, or restrained to beds in rooms that were often unheated.

An individual can psyche himself or herself on believing that a prescribed drug given from pharmaceutical doctors are making them feel better. Madness in today’s world can be covered up by those medications, unless everyone is brainwashed in believing that it can. In present society, medicine given to people to “treat” them for certain mental illnesses is normal to see. In the nineteenth century, people who suffered from mental madness had to deal with the insanity, such as depression or hearing voices, without any help. They had to go through the pain, while everyone else watched them, and those who had no problems judged them. In the past, a person was looked down on if someone else noticed problems with that individual. This created many people to try and hide their madness, so others would think they were normal. Those who believed they were safe from this psychological illness had not received any detrimental problem in their life to unleash it. Erik Larson’s novel, The Devil in the White City, foreshadows the characteristic of madness in many of the characters. Larson reveals in his novel that it does not matter what type of individual you are because everyone has some sort of madness inside of her or him, waiting to be revealed.

Course Video Critique 4: The New Asylums Summary: In the video, “The New Asylums,” explains the ever growing problem of mentally ill inmates are entering in prisons as the solution rather than mental hospitals. Prisons remain the only solution for the mentally ill due to the ability to keep them from harming the community or being involved in criminal activity. Unlike normal inmates, sometimes mentally ill inmates may refuse to cooperate with the prison officials and thus force may be required to put them into submission.

During the 1700’s the jails were not only used to confine criminals, but they confined people with mental illness as well. People with mental illness were subjected to inhumane treatment, even when the individual was admitted

From the early 1830s the insane were moved to the new state-run institutions that specialized in treatment of the mentally ill. The roots of this practice reach back to the eighteenth century, both in Europe and America. In the early ages of the insane asylums, the mentally ill when placed in the hands doctors, might have been bleed or fed an obscene amount of purgatives or laxatives. Finally a new medical standard known as "moral treatment" took hold, thanks to the French physician and asylum-keeper Philippe Pinel (1745–1826), who claimed that “[His] new field of asylum medicine guaranteed all the mentally ill the right to humane treatment rather than neglect or abuse.” Moral treatment was an approach to mental sickness related to how people think and treat each other, which became visible in the 18th century and came into place for much of the 19th century, coming partly from mental health care and partly from religious or moral

The first official mental asylum was built in the 1800’s for the treatment of the mentally ill. Illnesses such as depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, and insanity were treated here. American asylums helped to provide a home for those whose minds differ from normal. In the institutions, patients could seek treatments. The invention of the asylums helped shape the world in early urbanization.

It was believed that patients who suffered symptoms such as hallucinations, delusions, disorganized speech and behaviour, and other symptoms that cause social or occupational dysfunction; characterised as Schizophrenia in The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th ed.; DSM–5; American Psychiatric Association, 2013), were said to be suffering from demonic possession, mental retardation, or from exposure to poisonous materials. During this time there was no social support systems such as community based treatment like we have today. In addition, treatments that where available where barbaric and ineffective in helping the

Hippocrates was the first to recognize that mental illness was due to ‘disturbed physiology’ as opposed to ‘displeasure of the gods or evidence of demonic possession’. It was not until about one thousand years later that the first place designated for the mentally ill came to be in 15th century Spain. Before the 15th century, it was largely up to individual’s families to care for them. By the 17th century, society was ‘often housing them with handicapped people, vagrants, and delinquents. Those considered insane are increasingly treated inhumanely, often chained to walls and kept in dungeons’. There are great strides for the medical treatments for the mentally