Dr. Thomas Kirkbride was born in 1809 in Pennsylvania. He went to the University of Pennsylvania Medical School originally intending to become a surgeon. However, in 1840 after his training and internship at Friends Asylum, he was offered to become the superintendent of the newly established Pennsylvania Hospital of the Insane. "His ambition, intellect, and strong sense of purpose enabled him to use that position to become one of the most prominent authorities on mental health care in the latter
Can architecture and layout of a building really “cure” mental illness? Dr. Thomas Story Kirkbride thought so. Before 1844 the mentally ill were stashed away in prisons, jails, private homes and basements of public buildings. There were a lot of reasons people did get diagnosed with mental illness but many of which were not reality as we know it today. People were diagnosed with mental illness because of disagreements, lack of knowing a language and the weirdest thing I found was that women would
disorders. Instead of treating individuals with mental disorders as a sign of demon possession or confused soul, treat their disorder as an illness. In the late 1800's, another Philadelphia doctor caught wind of Rush's idea to treat mental illness. Thomas Kirkbride believed the insane, as they were called in nineteeth century, deserved humane treatment. After this realization, the asylum movement took place in Pennsylvania. Individuals suffering from mental disorders were taken out of their inhumane circumstances
What comes to mind when you hear the words “insane asylum”? Do such terms as lunatic, crazy, scary, or even haunted come to mind? More than likely these are the terminology that most of us would use to describe our perception of insane asylums. However, those in history that had a heart’s desire to treat the mentally ill compassionately and humanely had a different viewpoint. Insane asylums were known for their horrendous treatment of the mentally ill, but the ultimate purpose in the reformation
10 Wilmington Place (Southern Ohio Lunatic Asylum) The Southern Ohio Lunatic Asylum, a sanatorium in which a melting pot of the state’s criminally insane, daft and demented were housed, was later effectively named the Dayton State Hospital, ultimately named 10 Wilmington Place, which completely “derails” past notions of the previous named building, and has now become a retirement home for the elderly. “It must be remembered that popular thinking at this time had by no means entirely removed from
com/Hollywood/Academy/1777/crow1/james.html>. Renza, Louis A. “Influence.” Critical Terms for Literary Study . 2 nd ed. Ed. Frank Lentricchia and Thomas McLaughlin. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1995. 186-202. Thompson Chain-Reference Bible . King James Version. 5 th ed. Ed. Frank Charles Thompson, D.D., Ph.D. Indianapolis: B. B. Kirkbride Bible Co., Inc., 1988.