This weekend I went to Colonial Williamsburg for my bachelorette weekend. One of the things I wanted
This weekend I went to Colonial Williamsburg for my bachelorette weekend. One of the things I wanted to do while I was in Williamsburg was to visit the Public Hospital (Now an art museum) which was the very first facility for the treatment of the mentally ill in the United States. There’s a small free museum devoted to the Hospital on site. I’m also happy to announce that once discovered by the museum curator to be on my bachelorette weekend she exclaimed we were “Certainly the weirdest people she’d ever met.”Got to see a “Tranquilizer Chair” in person for the first time. After having seen the image to the right many times online. My personal photo on the left. “The chair was supposed to control the flow of blood toward the brain and, by lessening muscular action or reducing motor activity, reduced the force and frequency of the pulse. Both of Rush’s devices were supposed to exert an influence in some way to circulation, which was believed to be essential to the successful treatment of the insane. In actuality, they did neither harm nor good.”Source -- source link
#antique medical#quack medicine#colonial williamsburg#asylum#personal