Terrifying Photos From Inside an Old Insane Asylum

A look into the past to see how mental disorders used to be dealt with.

Published 9 years ago in Wtf

A look into the past to see how mental disorders used to be dealt with.

1
Anorexia Nervosa: This 1892 photo was published in Paris, of a teenage girl suffering from "visceral hysteric anorexia," which had developed into cachexia, meaning that the body had become so malnourished that her health couldn't be reversed. Back then, anorexia was thought to only be a disease that teenage girls suffered from.

2
Don't Touch: Doctors once believed that masturbation caused insanity so they created an uncomfortable covering for male genitalia.

3
Mental Ward: This is what a mental asylum looked like in Kalamazoo, Michigan back in the 1870s.
4
Electroshock Therapy: Thinking that they were helping to cure mental illness, patients were tortuously shocked until their feelings—and bodies—were numbed.

5
Violent Tendencies: In the violent ward of the Philadelphia State Hospital at Byberry in 1945, a man lies on a cot while restrained by his wrists.
6
Severe Patients: In the 1940s, the Pilgrim State Hospital in New York housed severely mentally ill patients in close quarters. They all needed to be kept in straight jackets so they wouldn't lash out.
7
Brain Storage: Doctors developed a habit of keeping pieces of their mental patients' brains encased in wax back in the 1800s.

8
Lobotomy: In order to severe the connection of the prefrontal cortex, doctors—and some people who didn't have any medical training—would push ice picks into the brain through the eyes. As a result, the patient would walk around expressionless and zombie-like.
9
Crazy Face: This mask was used on patients suffering form insanity.
10
All Tied Up: George Georgiou took this horrifying photo at the Serbian Psychiatric Hospital while he was working in the country between 1999 and 2002.

11
Cruel Restraints: Restraining patients was much more uncomfortable for those who were on the receiving end of treatment.
12
Shock Therapy: In the 1920s, an early type of shock therapy used was diathermia. Doctors soon considered it to be too dangerous to be helpful.
13
Poor Kids: Back in the 1960s, an asylum in Spain punished children with this uncomfortable contraption.