1600s to 1700s

Into the 1600s, according to the Brilliant Madness treatment timeline, the mentally ill were further isolated from society by being chained up in dungeons and receiving no such visitors. Unlike the 12 to 1400s where anyone could walk in and out of the asylums to either visit the patients properly or to make a spectacle of the poor souls. 

This remained the fashion into the 1700s where things only seemed to get worst. Institutions no longer only housed the mentally insane, but it became the fashion for people to drop their unwanted family members off at asylums. If they paid the lead physician a decent sum of money, they would declare the individual legally insane and toss them in  with the legitimately disturbed patients. With the 1700s, came the age of experimentation for mentally ill patients everywhere.

Even King George the Third wasn’t safe from the horrifying treatments of his physician, Francis Willis.
The King was leached repeatedly, and his doctor even induced
vomiting believing that it would indeed cure George of his madness. It is said on more than one occasion the King“knelt on his chair and prayed that God would be pleased either to restore Him to his Senses, or permit that He might die directly.” George was eventually “cured”, says Whitaker, but it became apparent later on that he suffered from a genetic disorder called porphyria, which results in the body producing unusual substances that can cause temporary delusions of the mind.

As America began to form so did many of its
mental institutions, and long with them came physicians like Benjamin Rush. Rush was well educated but had been taught the numerous treatments of the Europeans and decided instead of creating a new way of treating the mentally ill, that he
would continue to follow the age old remedies of torture. Many
mad doctors – as they were referred to – would compare the mentally unstable to wild savage animals that had no capacity for thought or emotions.

Depiction of 1600s mental institution

Pennsylvania State Hospital, 1752

Benjamin Rush