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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.
Letter from Hana Pickard to the Asylum Investigating Committee of the Citizen’s Association of Chicago, November 14, 1884
Courtesy National Library of Medicine
In this letter, an employee at the Cook County Asylum outlines the abuses she experienced while working there in the 1880s. She describes how the superintendent had “a bad temper” and “that his threat to shoot and whip others were common.” She ended the letter with hope that conditions would change.
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National Library of Medicine, 8600 Rockville Pike, Bethesda, MD 20894
National Institutes of Health, Health & Human Services
Freedom of Information Act , NLM Customer Support