Month: October 2023

With beauty reflecting class, culture, and (perhaps) virtue, it is easy to understand why one would be so obsessed with their outward appearance. It is, in other words, the most literal physical expression of character, ethics, and morals.

https://www.healthline.com/health/bipolar-disorder/history-bipolar#th-and-th-century

https://www.teenbookrecommendations.com/single-post/2020/04/14/the-strange-case-of-dr-jekyll-and-mr-hyde-critical-review#:~:text=Stevenson%20is%20showing%20that%20the,Jekyll%20is%20powerless%20against%20them.

It seems as though people possess both evil and good within. And to the extent they reveal themselves in society determine their sanity.

Perhaps, then, sanity is one’s ability to control [animal] urges, not so much one’s ability to be actually normal.

“Wild appearance and manner” from the Patient Certificates and Notices: Admission dates 1870-1871

While this patient’s “Facts indicating Insanity” differs from Bertha – or at least so far as I’m concerned – this one saddens me quite a bit more. To genuinely believe that your mother is still alive, and therein to be kept from her is deeply saddening. And to not be able to sleep because you hear voices of another family in the room during the night is also dejecting. While I couldn’t find the treatment outline, I hope she was not neglected and gaslighted. Because those convictions are true to her, and to be spurned would be pretty painful and lonely

Same patient as photo #2

“Idiots Act”

It seems as though disabled persons of a higher social status were accommodated accordingly.

A portrait of a blind shoeblack with his dogs, from Yorkshire, circa 1860. It was common for authorities at the time to segregate the disabled and mentally handicapped and many were put away in institutions on the grounds that it was for their own good and the good of society