Today’s Traumatized Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
The mental conditions attributed to those admitted to the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in Weston, West Virginia from its opening in 1864 until it was completed in 1881 bordered on the bizarre, to say the least. The most common was “chronic mania,” an all-inclusive diagnosis meaning that it was not known what was wrong with these people or why, but whatever it was necessitated their removal from society [i.e. women who had a mind of their own! – DeSpair]. A significant number of the new patients were mentally traumatized by what they experienced during the Civil War, such as “death of sons in war,” “decoyed into the army,” “excitement as officer,” “explosion of a shell nearby,” “exposure in the army,” “fall from horse in war,” “gunshot wound,” or just, simply, “The War”.
Opium abuse was another newly acquired vice that can be largely attributed to the Civil War. There was a massive upswing in narcotics addiction in the latter part of the 19th century due to the liberal use of morphine to ease pain. Drug addiction was rare at the beginning of the 19th century but common at the end of it, at least in the United States. By conservative estimate the U.S. had some 200,000 drug addicts in the latter half of the 19th century. Long after the Civil War was over morphine addiction was still commonly referred to as “the army disease.”
Narcotics were handed out like candy by Civil War army doctors. Overwhelmed by so much suffering they had few remedies to offer other than pain killing drugs. Nearly ten million opium treated pills were ingested by Union soldiers along with another 2.8 million ounces in other forms. Opiates were used not only to numb pain but also for chronic soldier maladies like dysentery and malaria, which reached nearly epidemic proportions during the Civil War.
Drug use remained prevalent well after the war as many veterans still suffered from the lingering effects of old wounds. In addition, physical and emotional drug dependency was not understood at the time and when wounds healed and medication abruptly withdrawn it induced psychosis in many former soldiers.
“Just a minute and I’ll make it all better.”
Culled from: Lunatic: The Rise and Fall of an American Asylum
Arcane Excerpts: Idiot Edition
A Compendium of Insanity is a book written by John B. Chapin, M.D., LL.D. and published in 1898. Chapin (1829-1918) was an American physician and mental hospital administrator. He was an advocate for the removal of mentally ill patients from the almshouses in New York State to a hospital setting and helped to pass a state law that provided hospital care for the patients. Here is an excerpt from the book:
Idiocy; Imbecility
Definition.—A person born without mental faculties or capacity is an idiot. Idiocy is a congenital condition due to arrested or abnormal development, prenatal conditions, disease, or accident. It is accompanied by physical defects, as short stature, deformity, irregular gait, or defective articulation. Many idiots show evidence of cerebral meningitis in infancy. An idiot does not become insane, though he may have psychical explosions, because the mental faculties are not sufficiently developed to pass into a state of disorder or disease. He is one who requires the consideration of, and who is both by legal fiction and in fact, an infant throughout the whole life-period. The terms idiocy and imbecility are frequently used as synonyms, but by general agreement it is an aid to regard both as meaning a congenital defect, differing rather in degree, as might be expressed by the words partial and complete. The term imbecility has been applied with great convenience to partial or arrested development which begins to show itself early in life and before the age of puberty. The child may be well formed and the mental faculties seem to be developing in a normal direction, but when he reaches a period when new and enlarged relations are usually established, and an advance might be expected, he shows an incapacity to receive instruction, falls behind his fellows, has an ungovernable temper, is not amenable to discipline, is cruel to dumb and helpless animals, is devoid of affection, has no capacity for any business, and may have even criminal instincts from an apparent lack of all normal faculties. Though he may reach an adult age, yet it comes to appear that he has not advanced beyond the capacity of a child of six or eight years. Idiocy and imbecility, which imply deficiency of mind, are regarded as instances of congenital defect. They are not, however, to be confounded with or brought within the category of insanity, which is rather recognized as a disease or disorder of the mind. An imbecile may have an attack of insanity, depending on the degree of mental development. The several classes are treated and cared for in institutions that are quite unlike, although in a legal sense the insane, idiots, and imbeciles are regarded as persons of unsound mind.
A child may grow to manhood and then show an irregular development, as a strong will and vacillating judgment; a vigorous understanding and be destitute of affection, have peculiarities of dress and manner, a disposition to walk in certain fixed directions, to touch person and places in passing, to talk aloud when alone and gesticulate in periods of abstraction, or to assume unusual modes of dress and living. Channels of thought are formed which become habits from frequent repetition. None of these peculiarities amount to insanity, but may be strictly in the line of a normal growth and development. They are the characteristics that normally belong to some individuals, and are regarded as eccentricities, but do not in themselves amount to a state of insanity, and need not have consideration here further than to place them properly as indicating a degree of degeneration inherited or acquired.
In the Civil War, one nickname for morphine was “soldier’s joy.”