The Ridges
After Union troops had won the Civil War in
1865, many veterans were suffering from conditions that would be diagnosed
today as post-traumatic stress disorder. In order to take care of these people,
a good deal of psychiatric hospitals was built and opened over the next decades
in numerous places all over the country. Athens, OH, was such a place. Opened
in 1874, the “Athens Lunatic Asylum”
(don't worry, the name was changed)
housed about 200 patients in the beginning. In later decades, the numbers
would go as high as 2,000 people, resulting in a patient-nurse ratio of about
50:1. Of course, the initially relatively good conditions declined with
increasing patient numbers. And whereas therapeutical methods are said to have
been very careful and humane in the beginning, the early 1900s inaugurated the
time when doctors believed in the success of water treatment, electro shock therapy,
and lobotomies. Cruel as these methods seem from our perspective today, I’d be
careful to judge the people who made use of them. They were doctors, using
methods that were scientifically believed to help. Sadly, these methods might
have damaged more brains and killed more people than they have actually helped. You can read a lot of the place’s history on the website that I have read
before going to The Ridges. I’m not sure about its historical
accuracy, but
I think it’s mostly reliable, and definitively an informative read with
some
good pictures.
Anyway, I wanted to go there, and Sophia was interested
in joining
me, so we went together. Since almost the entire complex is used by the
university today, we didn’t find much of the decay that you’d expect on
an old mental
institution. However, the main building is quite impressive, and the
huge
barred windows on the east and west wings still remind you of its
history. We
found only one of the two or three adjacent graveyards where, all in
all, some
2,000 men and women are buried. The entire complex made me curious about
all these 2,000 stories. It would be interesting to know the ratio of
people who died of natural causes in comparison to those who died as a
result of their respective treatments.
After Union troops had won the Civil War in
1865, many veterans were suffering from conditions that would be diagnosed
today as post-traumatic stress disorder. In order to take care of these people,
a good deal of psychiatric hospitals was built and opened over the next decades
in numerous places all over the country. Athens, OH, was such a place. Opened
in 1874, the “Athens Lunatic Asylum”
(don't worry, the name was changed)
housed about 200 patients in the beginning. In later decades, the numbers
would go as high as 2,000 people, resulting in a patient-nurse ratio of about
50:1. Of course, the initially relatively good conditions declined with
increasing patient numbers. And whereas therapeutical methods are said to have
been very careful and humane in the beginning, the early 1900s inaugurated the
time when doctors believed in the success of water treatment, electro shock therapy,
and lobotomies. Cruel as these methods seem from our perspective today, I’d be
careful to judge the people who made use of them. They were doctors, using
methods that were scientifically believed to help. Sadly, these methods might
have damaged more brains and killed more people than they have actually helped. You can read a lot of the place’s history on the website that I have read
before going to The Ridges. I’m not sure about its historical
accuracy, but
I think it’s mostly reliable, and definitively an informative read with
some
good pictures.
Anyway, I wanted to go there, and Sophia was interested
in joining
me, so we went together. Since almost the entire complex is used by the
university today, we didn’t find much of the decay that you’d expect on
an old mental
institution. However, the main building is quite impressive, and the
huge
barred windows on the east and west wings still remind you of its
history. We
found only one of the two or three adjacent graveyards where, all in
all, some
2,000 men and women are buried. The entire complex made me curious about
all these 2,000 stories. It would be interesting to know the ratio of
people who died of natural causes in comparison to those who died as a
result of their respective treatments.
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