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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 figure looking at a group of young children washing under large showers

**Boys using shower at New York Juvenile Asylum, Dietetic Gazette, May 1891**

Courtesy National Library of Medicine

The physician Simon Baruch created one of the first institutional shower baths in the New York Juvenile Asylum as a public health measure.

The Asylum was founded in 1851 and took in children who committed petty crimes or who came from impoverished or abusive families. The asylum sought to reform these children through moral, religious, and vocational training.

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