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In the 19th and 20th centuries, reformers in the United States and Europe built asylums in response to a range of social issues including disability - mental health, and alcoholism. These documents and images from the NLM Digital Collections bring to life the day to day experiences of people at these sites: the conditions of the asylums and the limits on liberty that many people in them experienced.

Illustration of a landscape with a large building from bird’s eye view

Bird’s eye view of the State Asylum for the Insane, Morristown, NJ, ca. 1850

Courtesy National Library of Medicine

This illustration shows a popular asylum design named the Kirkbride Plan, which centered the administrative functions of the hospital in the central core of the building. Patients were then housed in the wings that emanated from the core and were divided by gender and the type of mental health condition.