{"id":7866,"date":"2022-09-22T19:24:12","date_gmt":"2022-09-23T00:24:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/?p=7866"},"modified":"2023-12-06T20:28:11","modified_gmt":"2023-12-07T02:28:11","slug":"mfdj-9-22-2022-ralph-waldos-mad-brother","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/?p=7866","title":{"rendered":"MFDJ 9\/22\/2022: Ralph Waldo’s Mad Brother"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today’s Maniacal\u00a0Yet Truly Morbid Fact!<\/h3>\n

McLean Hospital was founded in 1811 in a section of\u00a0Charlestown, Massachusetts\u00a0that is now a part of\u00a0Somerville, Massachusetts. Originally named\u00a0Asylum for the Insane, it was the first institution organized by a group of prominent Bostonians who were concerned about homeless mentally ill persons \u201cabounding on the streets and by-ways in and about Boston\u201d. The effort was organized by Rev.\u00a0John Bartlett, chaplain of the Boston Almshouse. The hospital was built around a\u00a0Charles Bulfinch\u00a0mansion, which became the hospital\u2019s administrative building; most of the other hospital buildings were completed by 1818.\u00a0\u00a0Here\u2019s an excerpt from the book\u00a0Gracefully Insane\u00a0<\/a>about the hospital:<\/p>\n

The insane asylum seems to be the goal of every good and conscious Bostonian, babies and sanity the two leading topics. So and so has a baby. She becomes insane and goes to Somerville, baby grows up and promptly retires to Somerville. — Clover Adams, writing to her father in 1879<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In modern times, McLean would become famous not only as a therapeutic locus but also as a literary and artistic landscape.\u00a0 Even in the increasingly grubby Charlestown, which was starting to attract unsavory factories and slaughterhouses, McLean had its share of what we might now call celebrity patients.\u00a0 Two of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s brothers lodged in Charlestown.\u00a0 Robert Bulkeley Emerson was retarded from birth and spent many years in and out of the hospital, as the family’s finances permitted.\u00a0 When not at McLean, he boarded in a rooming house and sometimes helped out on Israel Putnam’s farm in Chelmsford.\u00a0 More tragically, in 1828, another brother, Edward Bliss Emerson, suffered an unexpected nervous breakdown and was sent to McLean.\u00a0 Edward’s institutionalization weighed heavily on his older brother Ralph, who was somewhat in awe of Edward’s accomplishments.\u00a0 The boy who had finished second in his Harvard class, unlike Ralph Waldo, who finished thirtieth out of thirty-nine; Edward had just been accepted into law practice with Daniel Webster.\u00a0 It is from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s pen that we have one of the first descriptions of the shock a family member experiences when visiting a loved one in the mental hospital:<\/p>\n

He has been now for one week thoroughly deranged & a great\u00a0deal of the time violent so as to make it necessary to have two men in the room all the time… His frenzy took all forms; sometimes he was very gay & bantered every body… Afterward would come on a peevish or angry state & he would throw down every\u00a0thing in the room & throw his clothes &c out of the window; then perhaps on being restrained wd. follow a paroxysm of perfect frenzy & he wd roll & twist on the floor with his eyes shut for half an hour. There he lay\u2014Edward, the admired, learned, eloquent, thriving boy\u2014a maniac.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Edward died of tuberculosis at age twenty-nine. Robert lived in the Boston area until he died at age fifty-two.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Culled from:\u00a0\u00a0Gracefully Insane<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Malady Du Jour!<\/h3>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nOZENA, HOLE IN NOSE FROM SYPHILIS<\/strong>
\nO.G. Mason, M.D., New York City; 5 x 7″, Artotype; 1881.<\/p>\n

Destruction of the nose was a frequent result of tuberculosis and syphilis, two of the nineteenth century’s most common infectious diseases.\u00a0 Tuberculosis typically destroyed the cartilage, while syphilis eroded the bone.\u00a0 Because of its association with syphilis, nasal deformity carried an unfortunate social stigma.\u00a0 This was especially true when the infected nasal passages were attacked by other micro-organisms, resulting in “ozena.”<\/p>\n

Ozena is derived from the Greek word “to stink.”\u00a0 The foul nasal discharge and putrid breath of those patients with nasal atrophy made their presence unbearable.\u00a0 The ozena associated with syphilis was the most offensive of all, and made public its sufferer’s disease.\u00a0 This woman has the classical deformity of syphilis.\u00a0 Treatment of ozena essentially involved burning out the infected areas with caustic agents. On occasion, pioneer plastic surgeons fashioned skin grafts to repair the defects.\u00a0 Many patients resorted to a nose prosthesis or mask.\u00a0 Today, antibiotic therapy has made the condition rare.<\/p>\n

Culled from:\u00a0\u00a0Harms Way<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today’s Maniacal\u00a0Yet Truly Morbid Fact! McLean Hospital was founded in 1811 in a section of\u00a0Charlestown, Massachusetts\u00a0that is now a part of\u00a0Somerville, Massachusetts. Originally named\u00a0Asylum for the Insane, it was the first institution organized by a group of prominent Bostonians who were concerned about homeless mentally ill persons \u201cabounding on the streets and by-ways in and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7866","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-facts","category-ghastly"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7866","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7866"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7866\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9754,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7866\/revisions\/9754"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}