I wish more people went to the Glore Psychiatric Museum in St Joseph, MO. Here’s a famous display from that museum, for “pica”:
That museum really really shows how little difference there was in the way we treated patients of asylums, versus inmates, versus prisoners of war. There are so many torture devices in there, disguised as medical devices. As someone formerly in the bioengineering field, it was a sober warning to the harm that can be created through “medical” devices and our own hubris and cruelty.
People have no idea what those were like. And how unethical forced imprisonment is. That should make everyone recoil. I thought we all hated slavery, right? It would be more compassionate to let them set up squats and car camps than to force institutionalization on them.
Ps the above picture results in the patient dying. It was one of the first surgeries to remove stomach contents and anesthesia wasn’t refined/good back then. So they performed an experimental procedure on a patient who couldn’t consent to it and who DIDN’T consent to it, and she died from it. That’s what asylums were like.
I wish more people went to the Glore Psychiatric Museum in St Joseph, MO. Here’s a famous display from that museum, for “pica”:
That museum really really shows how little difference there was in the way we treated patients of asylums, versus inmates, versus prisoners of war. There are so many torture devices in there, disguised as medical devices. As someone formerly in the bioengineering field, it was a sober warning to the harm that can be created through “medical” devices and our own hubris and cruelty.
People have no idea what those were like. And how unethical forced imprisonment is. That should make everyone recoil. I thought we all hated slavery, right? It would be more compassionate to let them set up squats and car camps than to force institutionalization on them.
Ps the above picture results in the patient dying. It was one of the first surgeries to remove stomach contents and anesthesia wasn’t refined/good back then. So they performed an experimental procedure on a patient who couldn’t consent to it and who DIDN’T consent to it, and she died from it. That’s what asylums were like.