Insane asylums

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Some people are so mentally deficient that they cannot, on their own, function in normal society. This is the result of greatly diminished mental capacity either through natural causes or from significant substance abuse. The question has long been, what to do with these people? How to tend to them?

In old agrarian societies somebody with mental problems would be considered to be extremely stupid and to hold ridiculous ideas. They would be slotted into the role of 'the village idiot'. Still, they were familiar to all. They had a role in that society and would be accepted as part of it and tended to. As we urbanized caring for them became more problematic. Rather than just being the simple-minded and foolish neighbor, they became an unpredictable stranger who may, or may not of, be a danger.

From the 19th through the early 20th centuries they attempted to solve that problem by housing them, and caring for them, in large institutions. While well intentioned, it did not work well. Housing so many delusional and/or mentally deficient people led to too much chaos to be easily controlled, and so the places naturally devolved into rigid and frequently inhumane confinements. It is an issue we still struggle with.

These are a small sample of engravings about those old insane asylums. The cruelty and bedlam (a word derived from these asylums) of the places are depressingly captured by them.

Dried Up Brains (not a post about zombies)

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"Destiny guides our fortunes more favorably than we could have expected. Look there, Sancho Panza, my friend, and see those thirty or so wild giants, with whom I intend to do battle and kill each and all of them, so with their stolen booty we can begin to enrich ourselves. This is noble, righteous warfare, for it is wonderfully useful to God to have such an evil race wiped from the face of the earth.

"What giants?" Asked Sancho Panza.

"The ones you can see over there," answered his master, "with the huge arms, some of which are very nearly two leagues long."

"Now look, your grace," said Sancho, "what you see over there aren't giants, but windmills, and what seems to be arms are just their sails, that go around in the wind and turn the millstone."

"Obviously," replied Don Quixote, "you don't know much about adventures.”

Don Quixote saw giants, dragons, chivalrous knights and damsels in distress. Meanwhile, in the here and now, some folks see Russians hiding in every bush, fancy themselves as modern French resistance fighters and think the Handmaidens Tale is a documentary. It all reminds me of another Cervantes quote:

“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”

Anyway, there are more Don Quixote illustrations after the jump.