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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 seated crown at tables surrounding a stage where one standing figure holds up slips of paper and another sits behind at a table

**“Senate Scene in Springfield, Illinois” from Modern Persecution; or, Insane Asylums Unveiled, Elizabeth P.W. Packard, 1873, reprinted 1973**

Courtesy National Library of Medicine

Elizabeth Packard, an author who herself had been wrongfully committed, lobbied the Illinois legislature about the rights of patients in asylums. As a result, the state passed a law requiring that people have a public hearing before being committed to a hospital.

Packard campaigned nationwide for that reform and for the legal protection of people in asylums.