#benjaminrush

Benjamin Rush's Birth Anniversary

12th October 1773, the first asylum in the American colonies opens in Virginia for 'Persons of Insane and Disordered Minds'. Treatment at the asylum consistent with the standards of the day are brutal, with the use of simulated drowning in ice baths , bleedings, induced vomiting and later electrocution to ‘shock’ insanity out of the patients. By 1790 the asylum built high fenced exercise areas named ‘mad yards’, and attitudes towards mental illness were somewhat lessened by the involvement of Dr. Benjamin Rush, known as the "father of American psychiatry, for his work ‘Observations and Inquiries upon the Diseases of the Mind’, published in 1812. As well as this work Rush also developed ‘the tranquilizer chair’, which was used at the asylum. Rush believed that ‘madness’, was caused by an inflammation of the brain, and as such patients were strapped into the chair and fitted with a head clamp which was supposed to control the flow of blood towards the brain, reduce motor activity, and henceforth reduce ‘madness’. Rush also strongly persisted in his belief on the benefits of bloodletting, a practice also performed at the asylum. Excessive bloodletting as advocated by Rush, was already by the 1790’s becoming questioned as a medical treatment, however Rush’s insistence on the practice, especially during the Yellow Fever epidemic of 1793, is thought to have hastened the death of Benjamin Franklin, as well as George Washington. In 1799, Rush won a $5,000 libel judgment against British radical journalist and reformer William Cobbett, who accused Rush of bleeding patients to death. (Continued in the comments) #mentalasylum #asylum #benjaminrush #historyofmadness #historyofmentalhealth #mentalhealthweek #18thcentury #18thcenturyhistory #psychiatry #historyofpsychology #historyofpsychiatry #elizabethfry #elizabethfrysociety #prisons #prisonhistory #newgateprison #19thcentury #19thcenturyhistory #madnessart #williamcobbett #electricshocktherapy #ect #thisweekinhistory #mentalillnessrecovery #darkhistory #historicalstory #historytales #historicalplaces #morbidhistory #darktales https://www.instagram.com/p/CVDjA9HFzXw/?utm_medium=tumblr

Benjamin Rush, Letters of Benjamin Rush, ed. L. H. Butterfield (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1951), Vol. I, p. 534, to John Adams on February 24, 1790. via The Founders' Bible (Shiloh Road Publishers, LLC, 2017), p. 366.

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NPR, “Can Gardening Help Troubled Minds Heal?”

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