# The Horror of Athens Lunatic Asylum _ American Asylums

An episode of [Human History ASMR](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/6793196842), 23 Sep 2026, 1 h 01 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/75116428/the_horror_of_athens_lunatic_asylum_american_asylums_human_voiced_no_ads.mp3

Step into the history of Athens Lunatic Asylum in Ohio and discover the realities behind one of America's historic psychiatric institutions. Opened in the nineteenth century, the hospital was created during an era when American society was developing new ideas about mental illness, institutional care, and the possibility of treating patients in purpose-built environments. Explore the origins of Athens Lunatic Asylum and the philosophy that shaped its early years. Discover how the institution's architecture, expansive grounds, farming activities, and carefully organized routines reflected the nineteenth-century belief that a structured environment, fresh air, meaningful work, and compassionate supervision could help patients recover. But as the decades passed, the realities of institutional life became increasingly complicated. This episode examines overcrowding, limited resources, changing medical theories, staff responsibilities, patient routines, and the challenges of caring for large numbers of people over long periods. Explore what patients ate, how they worked, how they spent their days, and how their relationships with families and the outside world were affected by institutionalization. The episode also places Athens within the wider history of American asylums. Examine the rise and decline of the nineteenth-century asylum movement, changing psychiatric treatments, the growing use of institutional medicine, and the reforms that eventually transformed mental healthcare. Discover how attitudes toward mental illness changed and why many large state hospitals ultimately closed or were repurposed. Athens has also accumulated numerous ghost stories and paranormal legends over the years. Rather than presenting these stories as established fact, this episode separates folklore from historical evidence while exploring why abandoned hospitals became such powerful settings for supernatural storytelling. Drawing on historical records, institutional reports, medical writings, photographs, newspapers, and modern scholarship, this immersive journey focuses on the people who lived and worked within the asylum and the complex history of American psychiatric care. Narrated with a calm, human voice, this episode is perfect for history enthusiasts, American history lovers, medical history listeners, documentary fans, relaxation, or listening before sleep. Enter the historic halls of Athens Lunatic Asylum and uncover the real stories behind one of America's most fascinating former psychiatric institutions.

## Transcript

[0:01] Speaker 1: On a hill overlooking the Hocking River Valley in southeastern
[0:05] Speaker 1: Ohio stands a vast Victorian Gothic edifice of red brick.
[0:11] Speaker 1: It's beautiful from afar, yet when you get up close
[0:14] Speaker 1: it's quite foreboding. This was the site of Athens' Lunatic Asylum.
[0:24] Speaker 1: It was an institution whose very halls witnessed some of
[0:26] Speaker 1: the darkest chapters in the history of mental health care
[0:32] Speaker 1: like many other asylums at the time, was opened with
[0:35] Speaker 1: high hopes and great fanfare in 1874, a beacon of
[0:40] Speaker 1: enlightened treatment. But it would gain infamy for the horrors
[0:45] Speaker 1: that unfolded within. Let's take an early example. One early patient,
[0:51] Speaker 1: a 14-year-old girl, was brought here by her desperate family.
[0:56] Speaker 1: They didn't know what to do. She was suffering from epilepsy. and, well,
[1:02] Speaker 1: a sign of the times, her parents believed that this
[1:06] Speaker 1: was demonic possession. But in those early days, the asylum's
[1:12] Speaker 1: elegant parlours and landscaped gardens masked the anguish of the, quote,
[1:17] Speaker 1: insane confined inside. And by the mid-twentieth century, these same
[1:24] Speaker 1: wards would be overcrowded, and echo with the aftermath of
[1:29] Speaker 1: crude lobotomy surgeries and, electroshock treatments, leaving patients in a
[1:36] Speaker 1: zombified haze, or maybe even worse. By the time the
[1:42] Speaker 1: asylum closed in 1993, it had accrued a legacy of
[1:46] Speaker 1: suffering so profound, so well-known, that tales of ghosts and
[1:53] Speaker 1: a mysterious permanent stain, the bodily outline of a patient
[1:57] Speaker 1: who died unattended, became local legend. So today, we're talking
[2:05] Speaker 1: about the rise and fall of Athens Lunatic Asylum. We'll
[2:09] Speaker 1: talk about it in a more third-person tone, I suppose.
[2:14] Speaker 1: We'll try to be neutral, even though the topic is
[2:19] Speaker 1: quite emotionally charged, as with most of the asylum videos
[2:24] Speaker 1: we've done on here. I don't know if you've been
[2:26] Speaker 1: following along with the playlists. In any case, just like
[2:30] Speaker 1: the others, it's going to be as educational as it
[2:34] Speaker 1: is disturbing. A true-life tale of progress turned to horror,
[2:40] Speaker 1: where fact rivals fiction in shock awe. There's really no
[2:45] Speaker 1: need to embellish this story. The facts are frightening enough
[2:49] Speaker 1: as it is. Now, before we begin, allow me to
[2:51] Speaker 1: welcome you to the channel. If it is your first
[2:54] Speaker 1: time here, well, perhaps you'll click that subscribe button. And
[2:59] Speaker 1: you'll leave a like and a comment to push it
[3:02] Speaker 1: out in the algorithm more, so we can fill YouTube
[3:06] Speaker 1: with this kind of historical investigation, fight that brain rot
[3:09] Speaker 1: a little bit. Now that's something we can all get behind. Also,
[3:13] Speaker 1: this video will be uninterrupted from start to finish for
[3:18] Speaker 1: your enjoyment. No ads cutting in to ruin the experience.
[3:22] Speaker 1: You see, on this channel, we are supported by those
[3:25] Speaker 1: on Patreon YouTube memberships. those who check out the merch store,
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[3:37] Speaker 1: interested in any of those links, you can find them
[3:41] Speaker 1: in the pinned comment, the video description, and the channel
[3:45] Speaker 1: description on the homepage, where you'll find the rest of
[3:48] Speaker 1: our playlists. Now, with all that being said, welcomes out
[3:53] Speaker 1: of the way, let us begin our topic for today.
[3:57] Speaker 1: Athens Lunatic Asylum. Of course, just as we've mentioned, if
[4:04] Speaker 1: you have been following along with the general trend, then
[4:07] Speaker 1: you'll know that those 19th century asylums were always opened
[4:11] Speaker 1: up in this wave of, let's call it, reformist optimism.
[4:18] Speaker 1: Certainly a time when science was really like a snowball
[4:22] Speaker 1: rolling down the hill. Everyone was making these big strides.
[4:28] Speaker 1: It was always forward, but sometimes in a wrong direction.
[4:34] Speaker 1: Sometimes even straight off the edge of a cliff. We'll
[4:36] Speaker 1: get to the bottomies later. In any case, in the
[4:39] Speaker 1: wake of the Civil War, there was a wave of
[4:42] Speaker 1: asylum building that swept America. This was led by advocates
[4:47] Speaker 1: like Dorothy Addis, who decried the mistreatment of the mentally
[4:50] Speaker 1: ill in almshouses and jails, which was usually where they
[4:55] Speaker 1: just got shoved into. just to be forgotten about out
[4:59] Speaker 1: of the sight of the public eyes, especially after the
[5:02] Speaker 1: Civil War, talking about things like PTSD and all the rest. Well, unfortunately,
[5:08] Speaker 1: people just got forgotten about. In any case, Ohio was
[5:13] Speaker 1: one state that was eager to modernize care for its insane,
[5:18] Speaker 1: broad umbrella term even at the time, and they authorized
[5:21] Speaker 1: a new state hospital in the southeast region. A competition
[5:26] Speaker 1: among towns actually ensued for the honour, and of course
[5:29] Speaker 1: the economic benefits of hosting it. Athens, a small college town,
[5:36] Speaker 1: won out, and local enthusiasm was quite palpable. When the
[5:42] Speaker 1: cornerstone was laid in 1868, there was a grand parade
[5:46] Speaker 1: of townspeople that marched up the hill in celebration. It
[5:51] Speaker 1: was seen as both a charitable undertaking, but also a
[5:54] Speaker 1: civic trophy. The architecture followed the Kirkbride plan, which, once again,
[6:03] Speaker 1: it has been mentioned before in the other videos, a
[6:06] Speaker 1: state-of-the-art design philosophy, conceived by the psychiatrist Thomas Story Kirkbride.
[6:14] Speaker 1: Essentially what it meant was an expansive main building with
[6:17] Speaker 1: staggered wings, they called them bat wings, by the way,
[6:21] Speaker 1: high ceilings, large windows to flood corridors with sunlight and
[6:26] Speaker 1: fresh air, and certainly an improvement on the older conditions
[6:31] Speaker 1: of the prisons and whatnot, and indeed the other hospitals.
[6:37] Speaker 1: Now the grounds themselves, designed by landscape expert Herman Harlan,
[6:41] Speaker 1: were quite idyllic. Hundreds of acres of farmland, ponds and
[6:47] Speaker 1: walking paths intended to provide a kind of healing environment
[6:51] Speaker 1: that was more Close to nature. You might be surprised.
[6:55] Speaker 1: It all sounds pretty good for the 19th century. Of course,
[6:59] Speaker 1: the buildings were very modern. The grounds were very well
[7:03] Speaker 1: taken care of. I don't think we can say that
[7:06] Speaker 1: they weren't ahead of the curve in terms of architecture
[7:09] Speaker 1: and all the rest. Now, of course, your surroundings do
[7:13] Speaker 1: dictate your mood sometimes. In any case, Athens Asylum had
[7:18] Speaker 1: opened as a model of moral treatment. the most modern
[7:24] Speaker 1: and enlightened of the time. Patients would recover through compassionate care,
[7:31] Speaker 1: routine work and restorative surroundings, rather than in chains at
[7:36] Speaker 1: the bottom of dungeons. And in its early years, the
[7:41] Speaker 1: asylum genuinely strove to fulfill these humane ideals. The first
[7:47] Speaker 1: superintendent and staff organized recreational activities and occupational therapy in
[7:53] Speaker 1: line with Kirk Bryant's recommendations. That was the guy who described...
[7:58] Speaker 1: the architect behind the building, by the way. If we mention,
[8:01] Speaker 1: just don't forget that name, very famous if we're talking
[8:04] Speaker 1: about asylums in America. Well, there were reading rooms, there
[8:08] Speaker 1: was a chapel for worship, and there was even a
[8:11] Speaker 1: grand ballroom where dancers and concerts were held for patient amusement.
[8:17] Speaker 1: One particularly strange attraction was a small alligator kept in
[8:22] Speaker 1: a fountain on the grounds, a little bit of an
[8:25] Speaker 1: eccentric touch that entertained visitors and patients alike. I'm sure
[8:30] Speaker 1: many people were going home talking about that one. Patients
[8:34] Speaker 1: were encouraged to take walks in the gardens, hopefully away
[8:37] Speaker 1: from the alligator, row boats on the pond, and participate
[8:42] Speaker 1: in farming or sowing, depending on their abilities, of course. Now,
[8:48] Speaker 1: this meaningful occupation was believed to focus the mind and
[8:52] Speaker 1: ease distress. In these early days, Athens was considered a
[8:57] Speaker 1: gold standard asylum, a progressive place of refuge, where those
[9:02] Speaker 1: mentally afflicted might actually have a chance of being cured.
[9:08] Speaker 1: But then there's the reality. It all sounds good on paper,
[9:13] Speaker 1: and a fancy building with nice green lawns and gardens, well,
[9:18] Speaker 1: that doesn't make up for the truth, the reality, which
[9:23] Speaker 1: would soon prove to be more complicated. And that line
[9:27] Speaker 1: between therapy and confinement began to grow quite blurry. So
[9:36] Speaker 1: let's peek beyond the asylum's hopeful facade and look at
[9:40] Speaker 1: the individual stories of the patients. Stories that today can
[9:45] Speaker 1: be both as horrifying as they are heartbreaking. So let's
[9:49] Speaker 1: think about that first patient we mentioned in the introduction,
[9:53] Speaker 1: the 14-year-old girl who was unfortunately suffering epileptic seizures, which
[9:58] Speaker 1: was thought to be under demonic influence. Such was the
[10:03] Speaker 1: medical ignorance of the era that epilepsy, along with many
[10:06] Speaker 1: other conditions that we classify separately now, were simply lumped
[10:11] Speaker 1: in under insanity. Now, this wasn't intentional cruelty. We can't
[10:17] Speaker 1: put it like that. It was more just the ignorance
[10:21] Speaker 1: of the time. In fact, the asylum's first annual report
[10:28] Speaker 1: listed epilepsy as a leading cause of commitment, accounting for
[10:33] Speaker 1: 31 male and 19 female patients in the first year alone.
[10:37] Speaker 1: So simply put, a neurological disorder was construed as madness.
[10:45] Speaker 1: And epilepsy... Well, that was just one of the many
[10:48] Speaker 1: dubious pretexts for admission. Victorian social norms and, of course, pseudoscience,
[10:56] Speaker 1: which there was plenty of real science, plenty of the
[10:59] Speaker 1: pseudo kind as well, led to a broad net of
[11:02] Speaker 1: what constituted insanity in the broadest sense of the term.
[11:07] Speaker 1: For men, habits deemed immoral or intemperate often landed them
[11:11] Speaker 1: in an asylum. For example, let's take alcoholism. which was
[11:16] Speaker 1: then going by the term intemperance and dissipation. It was
[11:22] Speaker 1: one common cause. Even more astonishing to modern eyes, masturbation
[11:27] Speaker 1: was considered a cause of insanity. A moral failing that
[11:32] Speaker 1: was so severe it was thought to damage the mind.
[11:38] Speaker 1: According to the 1876 report, 81 men and one woman
[11:45] Speaker 1: were recorded as having gone insane due to, quote, self-abuse
[11:50] Speaker 1: in the asylum's first three years. Well, doctors of the
[11:55] Speaker 1: time genuinely believed that excessive solitary vice could destroy a
[12:00] Speaker 1: person's sanity. Well, this is certainly a notion that stands
[12:07] Speaker 1: as a grim reminder of how unique early psychiatric theory
[12:12] Speaker 1: could be. Let's put it that way. Now, women, on
[12:16] Speaker 1: the other hand, they often fell victim to sexist diagnoses.
[12:22] Speaker 1: The asylum records show that the top three causes of
[12:25] Speaker 1: insanity among female patients were pure peril condition, that is,
[12:29] Speaker 1: complications of childbirth, change of life, a euphemism for menopause,
[12:35] Speaker 1: and menstrual derangement. In practice, women going through postpartum depression,
[12:43] Speaker 1: menopause or symptoms, or even Severe PMS could be labelled
[12:48] Speaker 1: as hysterical or deranged. Any bad mood could get you
[12:53] Speaker 1: thrown into the asylum, unfortunately. And indeed, dozens of women
[12:58] Speaker 1: were sent to Athens for such reasons in its first years.
[13:02] Speaker 1: Any behaviour deviating from the Victorian ideals of female propriety
[13:08] Speaker 1: risked being pathologised. A wife's emotional outbursts. or a mother's
[13:13] Speaker 1: exhaustion could be construed as madness on the highest level. Well,
[13:19] Speaker 1: women were frequently institutionized for these outright fallacious and unnecessary reasons.
[13:28] Speaker 1: The Athens Asylum patient rolls thus became a catalogue of
[13:31] Speaker 1: 19th century social anxieties. Beyond illness and addiction, the institution
[13:38] Speaker 1: also served as a convenient warehouse for individuals and families
[13:42] Speaker 1: or Authorities found troublesome. An especially striking example is that
[13:48] Speaker 1: of a coal miner from the nearby Nelsonville, Ohio. The
[13:53] Speaker 1: accounts from the time revealed that this man's insanity diagnosis
[13:57] Speaker 1: had nothing to do with hallucinations or psychosis, but rather
[14:02] Speaker 1: he was committed after agitating to start a labor union.
[14:07] Speaker 1: His medical notes claimed that he had succumbed to a quote,
[14:12] Speaker 1: overstudy on the labour question, and a delusional belief that
[14:17] Speaker 1: it was his duty to organise the miners to have
[14:21] Speaker 1: better wages and what not. And in truth, his only
[14:26] Speaker 1: symptom was political activism. Looked like you've had a bit
[14:31] Speaker 1: too much to think. Well, local industrialists and officials, threatened
[14:37] Speaker 1: by the prospect of a miners' union, found it pretty
[14:40] Speaker 1: expedient to declare him insane and just lock him away.
[14:45] Speaker 1: Problem solved. Incidents like that show how the asylum could
[14:50] Speaker 1: be wielded as a tool of social control, and the
[14:54] Speaker 1: higher-ups knew it. When the power to define sanity lay
[14:59] Speaker 1: in the hands of the establishment, anyone could lose their
[15:02] Speaker 1: freedom simply for defying social order, being on somebody's wrong side.
[15:11] Speaker 1: The carved inscription left by one desperate patient, quote, I
[15:15] Speaker 1: was never crazy, is etched onto a windowsill. Now that's
[15:21] Speaker 1: a testimony that not everyone held at Athens truly belonged there. Eh?
[15:28] Speaker 1: Bad luck. In any case, not all who entered Athens
[15:33] Speaker 1: were victims of misdiagnosis or malice, of course. The asylum
[15:38] Speaker 1: also housed many who did genuinely suffer from severe mental
[15:43] Speaker 1: illnesses or neurological damage that families simply could not manage
[15:48] Speaker 1: or tolerate. And among them, of course, were Civil War
[15:53] Speaker 1: veterans afflicted with what we would now recognize as PTSD.
[15:58] Speaker 1: Decades before terms like shell shock or even the more
[16:02] Speaker 1: modern PTSD existed, these veterans were described as incurably melancholic
[16:09] Speaker 1: or disturbed by wartime sights and sounds replaying in their minds.
[16:15] Speaker 1: Athens became the final home for dozens of former soldiers.
[16:20] Speaker 1: At least sixty-eight Civil War veterans are buried in its cemetery,
[16:25] Speaker 1: alongside veterans of other nineteenth-century conflicts. They arrived as broken men,
[16:32] Speaker 1: haunted by a war in an era where little understanding
[16:35] Speaker 1: or treatment for their condition existed. Similarly, some children and
[16:41] Speaker 1: adolescents found themselves in the asylum. Records indicate that unruly
[16:46] Speaker 1: or developmentally disabled youths were occasionally sent to Athens by
[16:50] Speaker 1: overwhelmed parents. A child who today might be diagnosed with
[16:56] Speaker 1: severe ADHD or autism could in 1875 be labelled a
[17:01] Speaker 1: lunatic if their behaviour strayed a or their parents' rules
[17:07] Speaker 1: and tolerance, perhaps. In one extreme case, mothers of large
[17:13] Speaker 1: families sometimes checked themselves into the asylum for a brief respite.
[17:19] Speaker 1: Life in the 19th century could be gruelling, and a
[17:22] Speaker 1: few overstressed mothers apparently feigned nervous exhaustion to receive just
[17:28] Speaker 1: a few weeks of rest and meals behind the asylum's
[17:31] Speaker 1: secure walls. Ironically, for a few people, They viewed the
[17:36] Speaker 1: asylum as a sanctuary, a controlled environment, where they could
[17:41] Speaker 1: recover from the strains of normal life. And speaking of
[17:47] Speaker 1: normal life, well, for patients at Athens in the late 1800s,
[17:52] Speaker 1: daily life was a mix of routine therapy and, well,
[17:57] Speaker 1: implicit coercion, we could say. Let's look at the positive side.
[18:02] Speaker 1: Many patients benefited from regular meals, exercise and a structured schedule,
[18:08] Speaker 1: often an improvement over the neglect or chaos they experienced
[18:12] Speaker 1: in their lives before. The asylum was largely a self-sufficient community.
[18:18] Speaker 1: Patients milked cows in the dairy, tilled the vegetable fields,
[18:24] Speaker 1: tended the orchards and helped maintain the facilities. This work
[18:29] Speaker 1: was called industrial therapy. And indeed it could be rewarding
[18:33] Speaker 1: for some. Nothing better than a sense of purpose. Without
[18:37] Speaker 1: one of them, anybody can lose their mind, I suppose.
[18:42] Speaker 1: But here's the thing. It was also forced labour by
[18:46] Speaker 1: another name. An economically convenient arrangement where unpaid patients kept
[18:52] Speaker 1: the institution running. By one account, free patient labour was
[18:57] Speaker 1: essential to maintaining operations at Athens. Those who refused, or
[19:02] Speaker 1: were unable to work, faced staff disapproval or other consequences.
[19:09] Speaker 1: And you have to remember too, that beneath that veneer
[19:11] Speaker 1: of kindness, that 19th century asylums had more streaks of brutality.
[19:17] Speaker 1: Patients deemed dangerous or unmanageable were likely put in restraints
[19:21] Speaker 1: or solitary confinement, and this is despite Kirkbride's gentler creed.
[19:28] Speaker 1: While Athens' early records don't Flaunt at the use of
[19:31] Speaker 1: chains or tranquilizer chairs, devices common in earlier asylums, you
[19:37] Speaker 1: can imagine that attendants resorted to straight jackets and locked
[19:42] Speaker 1: rooms when patients had violent outbursts. In an age before
[19:48] Speaker 1: antipsychotic medication, the asylum's tranquility was sometimes maintained by force.
[19:56] Speaker 1: And then there was the overcrowding. Even in the 19th century,
[20:00] Speaker 1: it began to undermine the moral treatment model. Simply just
[20:05] Speaker 1: too many people. can't follow the rules when you're too
[20:09] Speaker 1: stressed and busy like that. Athens Asylum was built for
[20:13] Speaker 1: about 550 patients in optimal conditions, yet within two decades
[20:19] Speaker 1: it frequently housed many more. As patient numbers climbed, funding lagged,
[20:26] Speaker 1: individual attention gave way to a more custodial atmosphere by
[20:31] Speaker 1: the turn of the century. The stage was being set,
[20:35] Speaker 1: but the asylums declined. from an enlightened hospital to a
[20:39] Speaker 1: custodial warehouse. Entering the 20th century, Athens Lunatic Asylum, by
[20:49] Speaker 1: then which was actually renamed Athens State Hospital, reflected a
[20:53] Speaker 1: broader shift in psychiatry. The initial optimism that every patient
[20:58] Speaker 1: could be rehabilitated had faded away. It was just not realistic.
[21:04] Speaker 1: At least not with the technology of the time. In 1903,
[21:11] Speaker 1: Ohio formally transitioned Athens to a custodial care model, effectively
[21:17] Speaker 1: acknowledging that many inmates would just never be cured, and
[21:21] Speaker 1: would rather just have long-term housing rather than active treatment.
[21:27] Speaker 1: The point now was just to keep them out of
[21:29] Speaker 1: the community and try to provide some kind of dignity.
[21:35] Speaker 1: This philosophical shift coincided with a steep rise in patient population, too.
[21:40] Speaker 1: The state steadily funneled more people into its asylums, including Athens,
[21:44] Speaker 1: but they did not provide the proportional resources. You can
[21:50] Speaker 1: see how this is becoming a problem. Overcrowding became chronic.
[21:56] Speaker 1: By the 30s and 40s, Athens was strained well beyond
[22:00] Speaker 1: its capacity. The grand Kirkbride-designed building designed with its private
[22:06] Speaker 1: rooms and airy halls to make the patients feel at home,
[22:10] Speaker 1: had been now subdivided and crammed with beds in every
[22:13] Speaker 1: available space. Day rooms and sun porches were converted to dormitories.
[22:20] Speaker 1: A facility intended for roughly 500 was teeming with over 1,500
[22:26] Speaker 1: patients at mid-century, and by the fifties the census ballooned
[22:31] Speaker 1: to around 1,800 on any given day. nearly triple the
[22:36] Speaker 1: number that Kirkbride had recommended for therapeutic efficacy. The effects
[22:43] Speaker 1: of such extreme overcrowding were of course devastating. Understaffing was
[22:47] Speaker 1: the norm. A few orderlies per ward struggled to supervise
[22:53] Speaker 1: dozens of mentally ill individuals. As for privacy, there was
[22:59] Speaker 1: none of that. Patients slept in rows of cots or
[23:02] Speaker 1: on mattresses lining the hallways, and sanitary conditions deteriorated alongside it.
[23:10] Speaker 1: Reports from this era, echoing exposés at other state hospitals,
[23:15] Speaker 1: describe scenes of neglect, patients left untended in filthy wards,
[23:20] Speaker 1: the smell of urine and disinfectant permeating the air, and
[23:25] Speaker 1: overtaxed nurses scrambling to distribute cold food trays to hundreds
[23:30] Speaker 1: of hungry patients. At Athens, as at many mental health asylums,
[23:37] Speaker 1: the lack of manpower meant many patients essentially fended for
[23:40] Speaker 1: themselves within the locked wards. Those who could not maintain
[23:44] Speaker 1: basic hygiene, or who acted out often ended up naked
[23:48] Speaker 1: or wearing soiled clothing, shut away in isolated rooms. Contemporary
[23:55] Speaker 1: reformers who visited similar Ohio institutions in the 40s were horrified.
[24:00] Speaker 1: Life magazine's famous 1946 Bedlam expose though focusing on other hospitals,
[24:07] Speaker 1: could well have described Athens. A quote from that goes
[24:11] Speaker 1: like this. These wards are crowded beyond capacity. The inmates
[24:16] Speaker 1: huddled in filth and idleness, most with no hope of release.
[24:22] Speaker 1: The Athens Hospital's own superintendent lamented the lack of resources
[24:26] Speaker 1: and staffing to the state legislature. warning that treatment was
[24:30] Speaker 1: becoming impossible amid such congestion of the wards, as documented
[24:35] Speaker 1: in annual reports of the forties. And in truth, Athens
[24:40] Speaker 1: had become less a place of healing and more of
[24:42] Speaker 1: just a human warehouse, where the goal was simply to
[24:45] Speaker 1: keep the disturbed quiet away from polite society. One indicator
[24:52] Speaker 1: of the decline in care was the asylum cemetery. In
[24:57] Speaker 1: the early years, families often reclaimed the bodies of deceased
[25:01] Speaker 1: patients for burial at home. But as decades passed, more
[25:05] Speaker 1: and more unclaimed patients were interred on the asylum grounds.
[25:09] Speaker 1: Eventually Athens maintained three graveyards for its dead. A total
[25:14] Speaker 1: of 1,930 people were buried over the asylum's lifetime. Up
[25:24] Speaker 1: through the early 1940s, These graves were marked with only
[25:27] Speaker 1: a small stone bearing a number. That's right, just a number.
[25:32] Speaker 1: No dates, no names. It would be patient number 550
[25:36] Speaker 1: or number 1110, laid to rest anonymously. Their identity only
[25:46] Speaker 1: recorded in a ledger, but you had to go into
[25:49] Speaker 1: the asylum walls to get that. This practice, while partly
[25:53] Speaker 1: a bureaucratic expedient, symbolized how the inmates of the asylum
[25:58] Speaker 1: kind of ceased to be seen as individuals. They were
[26:01] Speaker 1: numbered in life on hospital registers, and numbered in death
[26:06] Speaker 1: beneath their graves. Not until 1943 did Ohio change policy
[26:11] Speaker 1: to require names on new cemetery markers. And by then,
[26:17] Speaker 1: literally hundreds of numbered graves already dotted the hillside cemetery.
[26:22] Speaker 1: A landscape of forgotten souls. Now that's sad. In any case,
[26:29] Speaker 1: that story's not quite over, because in recent years local
[26:32] Speaker 1: volunteers have laboured to match names to numbers and replace
[26:37] Speaker 1: the old stones, trying to restore some post-mortem dignity to
[26:42] Speaker 1: those who perished in custody. It's a nice thought, I suppose.
[26:48] Speaker 1: A little late, but, well, it's better than nothing. But
[26:53] Speaker 1: in the mid-20th century, amid the daily rush of overcrowding,
[26:57] Speaker 1: Such compassion was scarce. Athens State Hospital's mission had shifted
[27:02] Speaker 1: from care to custody, and in the scramble to manage
[27:05] Speaker 1: the overflow, the humanity of patients was too often overlooked.
[27:11] Speaker 1: Of course, the stage was certainly set through this for
[27:16] Speaker 1: the more drastic treatments, if we can call them that,
[27:21] Speaker 1: that would become the asylum's most notorious legacy. The hope
[27:27] Speaker 1: for more moral therapy began to wane, and the 20th
[27:31] Speaker 1: century brought a new wave of psychiatric interventions, many of
[27:36] Speaker 1: which in hindsight were quite nightmarish, but at the time
[27:40] Speaker 1: were just new and shiny modern science. Athens, like its peers,
[27:48] Speaker 1: became a testing ground for experimental cures that often did
[27:52] Speaker 1: more harm than good. Medical science was groping for answers
[27:57] Speaker 1: for severe mental illness, and a series of invasive procedures
[28:01] Speaker 1: entered the scene. In the early 1900s, some doctors dabbled
[28:05] Speaker 1: in surgical interventions based on dubious theories, for example, removing
[28:10] Speaker 1: a patient's teeth or their colon, in belief that hidden
[28:15] Speaker 1: infections caused insanity, a theory thankfully not very prevalent in Athens,
[28:21] Speaker 1: but certainly indicative of the mindset of the era. By
[28:26] Speaker 1: the 1930s and 40s, more mainstream methods emerged. Insulin shock
[28:31] Speaker 1: therapy and metrazole convulsive therapy, aiming to jolt patients out
[28:38] Speaker 1: of psychosis by inducing seizures or comas. Such treatments were
[28:43] Speaker 1: embraced at state hospitals across the country. At Athens, insulin
[28:48] Speaker 1: coma therapy was likely administered to schizophrenic patients. they would
[28:54] Speaker 1: be injected with massive insulin doses to cause a hypoglycemic coma,
[28:59] Speaker 1: and then revived, sometimes only after dangerous seizures. Of course,
[29:05] Speaker 1: the outcomes were mixed at best, but the practice continued
[29:09] Speaker 1: for years, despite the obvious risk and trauma to the patients.
[29:15] Speaker 1: But even more common was the use of electroconvulsive therapy,
[29:19] Speaker 1: or ECT. introduced in the 1940s. In the asylum's later
[29:26] Speaker 1: records and recollections of staff, there are accounts of the
[29:30] Speaker 1: so-called shock shop. Patients, usually those with severe depression or catatonia,
[29:38] Speaker 1: were dragged or cajoled into undergoing ECT sessions. In the
[29:44] Speaker 1: early days, no anesthesia or muscle relaxants were used. Orderlies
[29:48] Speaker 1: would hold the patients down as a psychiatrist placed electrodes
[29:52] Speaker 1: on the temples and delivered a jarring electrical current straight
[29:56] Speaker 1: to the brain. The patient's body would stiffen and convulse violently,
[30:02] Speaker 1: sometimes resulting in bitten tongues or fractured bones. After a
[30:07] Speaker 1: brief unconscious spell, they'd awaken disoriented, perhaps with a short-term
[30:13] Speaker 1: memory loss or lingering confusion. Some did improve, transiently, I suppose,
[30:22] Speaker 1: but the majority did not. By the fifties, ECT was
[30:26] Speaker 1: routine at Athens, a grim assembly-line procedure repeated on many wards.
[30:33] Speaker 1: While electroshock therapy has evolved into a safer, more humane
[30:37] Speaker 1: treatment today, in the mid-century it was indisputably frightening and brutal. Noisy,
[30:45] Speaker 1: seizure-wracked rooms of patients being shocked became emblematic of asylum horror.
[30:53] Speaker 1: The most infamous intervention of all, however, was the lobotomy,
[30:58] Speaker 1: and I think it's something that People don't talk about
[31:01] Speaker 1: it as much as they should for how horrifying it was.
[31:05] Speaker 1: At least, in my opinion. And this was where Athens
[31:10] Speaker 1: really earned its dark renown. So what is a lobotomy?
[31:16] Speaker 1: Basically the surgical destruction of brain tissue to temper mental illness.
[31:21] Speaker 1: It was pioneered in the 30s and touted as a
[31:24] Speaker 1: miracle cure by the 40s. Ohio State Hospitals adopted the
[31:29] Speaker 1: procedure enthusiastically, and Athens was no exception. In fact, the
[31:34] Speaker 1: asylum became a regular stop for Dr. Walter J. Friedman II,
[31:39] Speaker 1: the American evangelist of lobotomy. Friedman, sometimes called Dr. Lobotomy,
[31:47] Speaker 1: travelled from hospital to hospital in the 40s and 50s,
[31:50] Speaker 1: performing and demonstrating his trademark operation, the transorbital lobotomy. chillingly
[31:57] Speaker 1: nicknamed Icepick Lobotomy. Each summer in the fifties, Freeman would
[32:03] Speaker 1: arrive in Athens for an intensive bout of surgeries. Using
[32:07] Speaker 1: an instrument akin to an icepick, though it's technically called
[32:10] Speaker 1: an orbitoclast, he accessed the brain through the patient's eye socket.
[32:16] Speaker 1: I want you to imagine that in your head right now.
[32:20] Speaker 1: Icepick straight through the eye socket. Very grim. While often
[32:27] Speaker 1: working with assembly line efficiency and minimal sterility, Freeman would
[32:32] Speaker 1: insert the sharp instrument above the eyeball, hammer it through
[32:36] Speaker 1: the thin orbital bone, and sweep it back and forth
[32:40] Speaker 1: to sever connections in the frontal lobe. Remarkably, this could
[32:46] Speaker 1: be done in only a few minutes per patient. Eyewitness
[32:49] Speaker 1: accounts and hospital logs from Athens indicate that Freeman sometimes
[32:53] Speaker 1: performed more than 20 lobotomies in a single day. Nurses
[32:58] Speaker 1: would line up sedated patients, often using just electroshock as anesthesia,
[33:04] Speaker 1: and Freeman went down the row with his tools. Over
[33:08] Speaker 1: the course of the 50s, he personally performed hundreds of
[33:12] Speaker 1: lobotomies at Athens. By one tally, over 200 of them.
[33:19] Speaker 1: The results of these lobotomies were as tragic as they
[33:21] Speaker 1: were grotesque. Roughly 2-5% of patients died from the operations.
[33:27] Speaker 1: some from brain hemorrhage, some from post-operative seizures or infections.
[33:33] Speaker 1: And those who did survive weren't much better off. They
[33:37] Speaker 1: were left often with permanent impairments. Their personalities frequently changed dramatically.
[33:43] Speaker 1: Many became lethargic, childlike or emotionally blunted. Some could no
[33:49] Speaker 1: longer care for themselves, trading one form of disability, mental
[33:54] Speaker 1: anguish for another, brain damage. Yet in the optimistic or
[34:00] Speaker 1: oblivious view of asylum doctors at the time, lobotomy was
[34:03] Speaker 1: a success if it rendered an agitated patient docile. Indeed,
[34:08] Speaker 1: hospital officials touted that many lobotomized patients were therefore cured
[34:12] Speaker 1: enough to be discharged back to their families. Of course,
[34:17] Speaker 1: this so-called cure often meant the person could do little
[34:19] Speaker 1: more than sit quietly at home, their former self effectively
[34:24] Speaker 1: erased by the late fifties. Reports of lobotomies' horrors and
[34:29] Speaker 1: the introduction of the first psychiatric drugs finally halted the frenzy.
[34:35] Speaker 1: In 1955, the tranquilizer Thorazine was introduced at Athens, and
[34:41] Speaker 1: had a dramatic calming effect on patients without having to
[34:44] Speaker 1: resort to surgery. Lobotomies began to taper off, ending by
[34:50] Speaker 1: the 60s, but not before scores of Athens patients were
[34:54] Speaker 1: left with scars, visible and invisible. But it's essential to recognize, too,
[35:02] Speaker 1: that such treatments, as cruel as they seem in hindsight,
[35:06] Speaker 1: were often undertaken by doctors who really believed that they
[35:10] Speaker 1: were just helping. The staff at Athens Asylum operated under
[35:14] Speaker 1: the medical standards of the day, and we can't really
[35:19] Speaker 1: judge them by a modern lens. Of course, we can
[35:23] Speaker 1: look back and shake our heads at the whole thing,
[35:26] Speaker 1: but We can't really say that they were villains. Hydrotherapy,
[35:33] Speaker 1: electric shock and lobotomy, they were all accepted practices taught
[35:37] Speaker 1: in psychiatric training mid-century. However, for the patient victims, this
[35:45] Speaker 1: distinction offered little comfort. In their experience, the asylum, once
[35:50] Speaker 1: intended as a place of refuge, became their place of torment.
[35:55] Speaker 1: One can find stories in the annals of Athens of
[35:58] Speaker 1: patients who pleaded not to be subjected to another icy
[36:01] Speaker 1: bath or another round of shocks. Some physically resisted lobotomy
[36:06] Speaker 1: and had to be wrestled down. Others went meekly, having
[36:12] Speaker 1: been convinced or perhaps coerced that this was the only
[36:16] Speaker 1: path for them to get well or maybe get out.
[36:22] Speaker 1: I suppose one of the grimmest things about this asylum's history,
[36:27] Speaker 1: when that cure becomes as terrifying as the illness, or
[36:30] Speaker 1: even more terrifying. Of course, amid all the routine horrors,
[36:36] Speaker 1: there are a few more extraordinary incidents at Athens that
[36:41] Speaker 1: have seared themselves into local memory, incidents that highlight the
[36:46] Speaker 1: human cost of the asylum's decline. One of the most
[36:50] Speaker 1: macabre was the disappearance of Margaret Schilling in 1978. Schilling
[36:57] Speaker 1: was a middle-aged patient with developmental disabilities who went missing
[37:02] Speaker 1: within the hospital complex. Staff fanned out and searched for
[37:06] Speaker 1: her in vain. But it was only weeks later, in
[37:11] Speaker 1: January 1979, that Margaret's body was accidentally discovered in a
[37:16] Speaker 1: long-abandoned ward of the asylum. She had apparently... locked herself
[37:22] Speaker 1: in an unused top-floor room, and starved to death, utterly overlooked,
[37:29] Speaker 1: in a building where she should have never been allowed
[37:32] Speaker 1: to be left alone. Of course, by the time they
[37:36] Speaker 1: found her, the remains had badly decomposed on that concrete floor.
[37:43] Speaker 1: The fluids from her body left a permanent stain, a pale,
[37:47] Speaker 1: ghostly silhouette of what used to be her form, etched
[37:51] Speaker 1: into that porous floor. Despite repeated attempts to scrub it
[37:57] Speaker 1: or bleach it out, the stain of Margaret Schilling's body
[38:02] Speaker 1: stubbornly remained, and it can still be seen to this
[38:06] Speaker 1: very day. Well, that's a chilling imprint of a forgotten
[38:11] Speaker 1: patient's death, that's for sure, fueling decades of, I suppose
[38:16] Speaker 1: we can say it's a morbid fascination. Visitors speak in
[38:21] Speaker 1: Hushed tones of seeing Margaret's ghost wandering the empty halls,
[38:26] Speaker 1: or hearing unexplained noises near the room where she died.
[38:32] Speaker 1: And yes, maybe we're straying a little bit out of
[38:34] Speaker 1: history here. Tales like that belong to folklore. But still,
[38:41] Speaker 1: the true tragedy doesn't need any embellishment. An inmate of
[38:45] Speaker 1: the assignment literally starved and then rotted away. unnoticed by
[38:51] Speaker 1: her caretakers, leaving behind a physical trace of the asylum's negligence.
[38:58] Speaker 1: Another infamous chapter of Athens' later years involves Billy Milligan,
[39:04] Speaker 1: a patient whose story bridged the worlds of true crime
[39:07] Speaker 1: and psychiatric controversy. Once again, we find ourselves in the 70s,
[39:15] Speaker 1: and Athens Hospital admitted Milligan after he was arrested for
[39:18] Speaker 1: a series of violent crimes, Milligan was diagnosed with dissociative
[39:24] Speaker 1: identity disorder, or multiple personality disorder in modern vernaculars. claiming
[39:30] Speaker 1: that different personalities within him committed the crimes without his awareness.
[39:36] Speaker 1: In a sensational legal case, he was found not guilty
[39:40] Speaker 1: by reason of insanity, and sent to Athens and other
[39:45] Speaker 1: state facilities for treatment. In fact, He became one of
[39:50] Speaker 1: the first individuals in U.S. history to use multiple personalities
[39:55] Speaker 1: as a successful legal defense. At Athens, doctors observed an
[40:00] Speaker 1: array of distinct personas in Milligan, from a Yugoslavian communist
[40:05] Speaker 1: to a small English-speaking child, each emerging in therapy sessions.
[40:11] Speaker 1: Milligan's case, while certainly dramatic, chose the asylum's role in
[40:16] Speaker 1: handling the dangerous, mentally ill not just those who were
[40:22] Speaker 1: straying from society's norms. Sometimes you had hardened criminals. In
[40:29] Speaker 1: any case, by the 70s, Athens was not only caring
[40:32] Speaker 1: for the chronically insane, but housing criminal offenders deemed too
[40:36] Speaker 1: ill for prison, and that of course puts an extra
[40:40] Speaker 1: layer of pressure on the staff. Unpredictability. As for the public,
[40:46] Speaker 1: They were both riveted and alarmed by Milligan's story, which
[40:49] Speaker 1: raised questions about the boundary between madness and malice. For
[40:54] Speaker 1: the hospital staff, managing such a high-profile, unpredictable patient was
[41:00] Speaker 1: yet another formidable challenge, in an era when the institution
[41:03] Speaker 1: was struggling to reinvent itself. If these later episodes proved
[41:10] Speaker 1: to be lurid in the headlines, Countless quieter tragedies unfolded
[41:15] Speaker 1: at Athens through the years, too. Patients died by taking
[41:19] Speaker 1: their own lives, unable to bear confinement. Others succumbed to
[41:24] Speaker 1: ordinary diseases made lethal by crowded living and stress. There
[41:31] Speaker 1: were incidents, too, of patient-on-patient violence, fights in the dormitories.
[41:37] Speaker 1: A few people even got murdered during the Second World War.
[41:42] Speaker 1: Understaffing was so dire that some wards were reportedly supervised
[41:46] Speaker 1: by conscientious objectors serving as orderlies. Lacking training, they sometimes
[41:51] Speaker 1: lost control of the more volatile situations. The accumulated suffering
[41:57] Speaker 1: behind the asylum's walls gave rise, after its closure, to
[42:01] Speaker 1: a persistent lure of hauntings. For decades now, Ohio University
[42:06] Speaker 1: students and town residents have swapped stories of eerie encounters
[42:10] Speaker 1: at the old asylum. now renamed The Ridgers, by the way.
[42:16] Speaker 1: Shadowy figures are said to appear in empty halls. Screams
[42:20] Speaker 1: echo at night, and cold spots mark the locations of
[42:24] Speaker 1: past anguish. Ghost hunters are frequently trespassed into the derelict wings,
[42:30] Speaker 1: hoping to capture evidence of the paranormal. Athens attained such
[42:36] Speaker 1: a reputation in 2000. The British Society for Psychical Research
[42:42] Speaker 1: labelled it the 13th most haunted place on Earth. A
[42:48] Speaker 1: television special once featured the Ridgers as one of the
[42:53] Speaker 1: scariest places on Earth, too. I don't know if you
[42:56] Speaker 1: remember that show. Remember the guy's voice? Scariest places on Earth. Well,
[43:04] Speaker 1: I remember the show. We're talking 15 years ago, something
[43:08] Speaker 1: like that. Well, while academic historians may not endorse these
[43:14] Speaker 1: ghostly legends, they certainly acknowledge the mythos of hauntings as
[43:20] Speaker 1: just another part of the asylum's legacy. A cultural acknowledgement
[43:24] Speaker 1: that a great deal of pain and emotion certainly saturated
[43:28] Speaker 1: those buildings, and it left an imprint that people can
[43:32] Speaker 1: still sense. I don't know if I believe in it all,
[43:37] Speaker 1: but there's got to be something to it, right? A
[43:41] Speaker 1: place like that, well, like a bad smell, things tend
[43:46] Speaker 1: to linger around a little while. In any case, ultimately,
[43:51] Speaker 1: as the legend and reality blend, one incontrovertible fact remains,
[43:58] Speaker 1: and that is that Athens Lunatic Asylum left behind thousands
[44:02] Speaker 1: of shattered lives and sad stories. The physical reminders, the
[44:07] Speaker 1: numbered graves, the scratched messengers in the sandstone windowsills, the
[44:13] Speaker 1: fading medical logs detailing one cure after another, all speak
[44:18] Speaker 1: to an error of immense suffering, and sincere, if misguided,
[44:24] Speaker 1: efforts to relieve it. The horror of Athens is not
[44:28] Speaker 1: a singular event, but the cumulative weight of everyday cruelty.
[44:33] Speaker 1: The quiet terror of a patient awakening confused from electroshock,
[44:38] Speaker 1: The loneliness of an elderly schizophrenic wandering the halls among hundreds,
[44:43] Speaker 1: yet completely alone. The despair of that sane person trapped,
[44:49] Speaker 1: pleading for someone to believe that they don't belong there.
[44:54] Speaker 1: Those are the true ghosts that haunt Athens Asylum's legacy.
[44:58] Speaker 1: And whether you believe in the supernatural side of it,
[45:01] Speaker 1: there's plenty of scary stories to be told. just in
[45:05] Speaker 1: the realm of history, strictly alone. Of course, by the 80s,
[45:13] Speaker 1: Athens State Hospital, as it was then known, was a
[45:16] Speaker 1: skeleton of its former self. The population plummeted from its
[45:20] Speaker 1: peak in the 50s, as part of a nationwide trend
[45:23] Speaker 1: of deinstitutionalization. New psychiatric medicines, introduced in the 50s and 60s,
[45:32] Speaker 1: mood stabilizers, antipsychotics, allowed many patients who would have once
[45:37] Speaker 1: been lifelong asylum residents to now live in smaller community settings.
[45:42] Speaker 1: But lucky ones even got to live at home with
[45:45] Speaker 1: a bit of support and probably the occasional check-up. Moreover,
[45:50] Speaker 1: shifting social attitudes and legal standards made involuntary commitment more restrictive.
[45:56] Speaker 1: No longer could someone be easily locked away for hysteria
[46:01] Speaker 1: or minor eccentricities. Lawsuits and federal reforms in the 70s
[46:07] Speaker 1: demanded better conditions and affirmed patients' rights. The asylum had
[46:12] Speaker 1: begun as an embodiment of progressive ideas and ended up
[46:16] Speaker 1: being dismantled, caught up in that new wave of progress.
[46:23] Speaker 1: And so, in 1993, after 119 years of operation, the
[46:25] Speaker 1: last remaining patients were transferred out to a modern psychiatric
[46:34] Speaker 1: facility nearby. The once overcrowded wards were now empty, paint
[46:41] Speaker 1: peeling from the walls, wheelchairs sitting idly in dusty corners.
[46:47] Speaker 1: For a brief time there was talk of demolishing the
[46:49] Speaker 1: historic asylum buildings. They were seen as outdated, or even
[46:54] Speaker 1: shameful monuments of a bygone era. But don't worry, there
[47:01] Speaker 1: was a fortunate twist. Ohio University acquired the property and
[47:06] Speaker 1: recognized its architectural and historical value. The asylum complex was
[47:12] Speaker 1: rechristened the Ridgers, and efforts began to adapt to its
[47:18] Speaker 1: new use while preserving its character. Over subsequent decades, many
[47:23] Speaker 1: of the old wards and support buildings were renovated into classrooms, offices,
[47:27] Speaker 1: and even an art museum. The picturesque hills and cemeteries
[47:33] Speaker 1: were incorporated into a nature preserve and walking trails. In essence,
[47:39] Speaker 1: the site was reabsorbed into the community, transformed from a
[47:43] Speaker 1: place of exclusion to one of engagement. However, just renovating
[47:50] Speaker 1: bricks and mortar and a few new coats of paint
[47:55] Speaker 1: doesn't quite erase the past. The story of the asylum
[48:01] Speaker 1: has become a subject of study and reflection, Just another
[48:04] Speaker 1: cautionary tale in the history of medicine and public policy.
[48:08] Speaker 1: I suppose on the path to progress, I don't know,
[48:14] Speaker 1: a few people get the short end of the stick.
[48:18] Speaker 1: Scholars have referred to Athens as a healing landscape with
[48:22] Speaker 1: a stained legacy. And that phrase captures the duality well.
[48:28] Speaker 1: The asylum was founded on lofty principles. yet its legacy
[48:32] Speaker 1: is indelibly stained by suffering and error. And when teaching
[48:37] Speaker 1: about Athens, educators often emphasize how it encapsulates the trajectory
[48:41] Speaker 1: of institutional psychiatry. In the beginning, representing hope, the idea
[48:48] Speaker 1: that mental illness could be cured in a peaceful asylum
[48:51] Speaker 1: away from the cruelties of the outside world. But over time,
[48:55] Speaker 1: due to underfunding, crowding, and the limitations of medical knowledge,
[49:00] Speaker 1: it all fell apart It devolved into something ironically resembling
[49:06] Speaker 1: what it had aimed to replace. A bedlam. A place
[49:11] Speaker 1: of misery and fear that people whispered about in dread.
[49:19] Speaker 1: And so today... the memory of Athens' lunatic asylum challenges
[49:24] Speaker 1: us to consider how society cares for its most vulnerable members.
[49:29] Speaker 1: The horrors that occurred there were largely a product of
[49:32] Speaker 1: ignorance and indifference. Perhaps there were a few bad actors,
[49:38] Speaker 1: but for the most part it wasn't intentional evil. But
[49:44] Speaker 1: that reminds us that good intentions are not enough without resources, understanding,
[49:52] Speaker 1: and oversight. Each generation has its blind spots. I'm sure
[49:59] Speaker 1: if we look back on our own generation, we'll find
[50:02] Speaker 1: plenty of things in a hundred years' time that certainly
[50:06] Speaker 1: seem to be quite out of the ordinary. In the
[50:10] Speaker 1: 19th century, it was rampant misdiagnoses and quack cures. In
[50:15] Speaker 1: the mid-20th century, it was overconfidence in radical medical procedures.
[50:19] Speaker 1: Of course, you have to hope that in the 21st
[50:24] Speaker 1: century we've learned from these mistakes. Committing to treat the
[50:28] Speaker 1: mentally ill with both compassion and humility, and to balance
[50:32] Speaker 1: safety and dignity. But with each generation that comes around,
[50:37] Speaker 1: Everyone thinks they're at the pinnacle of science. Everyone thinks
[50:41] Speaker 1: they're doing the right things. We only know in hindsight,
[50:45] Speaker 1: I suppose. The Athens Asylum cemeteries, with the new markers
[50:50] Speaker 1: now bearing the real names instead of numbers, they're the
[50:54] Speaker 1: real witnesses, urging us to remember those who lived and died.
[50:59] Speaker 1: Not as statistics, but human beings with very human stories.
[51:06] Speaker 1: So how to sum it all up? while the tale
[51:10] Speaker 1: of Athens is at once deeply disturbing, but also instructive.
[51:15] Speaker 1: The early years showed what care could be at its best,
[51:18] Speaker 1: at least for the time. Humane, and as forward-thinking as
[51:23] Speaker 1: they could get in the 19th century. But, like pretty
[51:27] Speaker 1: much all of the other insane asylums at the time,
[51:31] Speaker 1: the middle years showcased the worst abuses of a broken system.
[51:36] Speaker 1: From the banal horror of neglect, to the dramatic violence
[51:40] Speaker 1: of forced lobotomies, people dragged off kicking and screaming to
[51:45] Speaker 1: be turned into vegetables. And his final years demonstrated society's
[51:52] Speaker 1: new capacity to change course, albeit too late for those
[51:57] Speaker 1: poor souls who pass through the wards. Even now, long
[52:02] Speaker 1: after the last patient left, the honest horrors of Athens
[52:05] Speaker 1: have not faded from the public imagination. and that magnificent
[52:10] Speaker 1: building still looms over Athens, Ohio. Eerie and beautiful. It
[52:17] Speaker 1: compels us to ask what stories its walls would tell
[52:20] Speaker 1: if they could speak. Of all the horrible things we've
[52:24] Speaker 1: talked about with any of these asylums, these are the
[52:27] Speaker 1: things that we know about. And when you're talking about
[52:31] Speaker 1: the 19th century and the early 20th century, well, it
[52:34] Speaker 1: was a lot easier back then to sweep things under
[52:37] Speaker 1: the rug But those stories, the ones we have now
[52:42] Speaker 1: laid bare with historical research, they're more unsettling than any
[52:46] Speaker 1: ghost tale. Because they're about real people, frightened, mistreated, or
[52:51] Speaker 1: simply lost. And a system that struggled to balance compassion
[52:56] Speaker 1: with control. And so, in remembering the horror of Athens'
[53:01] Speaker 1: lunatic asylum, you have to do more than just recoil
[53:04] Speaker 1: at past darkness. But one must shed light on how
[53:08] Speaker 1: far we've come And also how vigilant we must remain
[53:12] Speaker 1: to ensure such horrors never recur under the guise of care.
[53:20] Speaker 1: And that's it for another insane asylum video. I really
[53:26] Speaker 1: do hope you're enjoying the series. We still have another
[53:31] Speaker 1: one planned. Maybe we'll do more of them. I don't
[53:35] Speaker 1: know how many insane asylums the United States has had.
[53:40] Speaker 1: Maybe we'll do ones from other countries. I don't know.
[53:46] Speaker 1: My mum used to tell me about one, because from Melbourne, Australia,
[53:52] Speaker 1: mum used to tell me about Q-K-E-W. I don't know
[53:56] Speaker 1: if it was Q-Insane Asylum or whatever it was. I
[53:59] Speaker 1: don't think they called it that. Gave a little bit
[54:01] Speaker 1: more of a tasteful name, but basically for kids with
[54:04] Speaker 1: autism and all the rest. Same old story. poor treatment,
[54:11] Speaker 1: all the rest. Maybe that's the next one I'll do.
[54:16] Speaker 1: If not, just for the sake of my mum, who
[54:19] Speaker 1: would love to hear it. In any case, I'm going
[54:24] Speaker 1: to thank my top dear patrons and supporters, both on
[54:29] Speaker 1: YouTube and... What's the other one? Patreon. Excuse me. We've
[54:36] Speaker 1: got Kimberly, Christine, Sally, Amber, Susan, Cameron, Carrie, Charlene, Lindry, Skatiana, Nicholas, Ulf, Edneir, Alexander, Charles, Christine, Dr. Neuronerd, Erin, Jaden, Jim, Jeffrey, Jessica, Madeline, Melissa,
[54:50] Speaker 1: Orthodox Review, Scott, Shel, Wendy, Josie, Sarah, Ryan, Thor, Cameron, Stefan, Kevin, HMSHH, Crystal, Dalvery, Anthony, Lucy, Brandon,
[55:01] Speaker 1: Goo Goo Bonic, Nicholas, Craig, Neftis, Alexander, Gokhan, Dorsey, Venita, Claire, Courtesy, Carol, Robert, Mary, Bridget, Nefertari, Yvette,
[55:13] Speaker 1: Miss Mochi, Eleven, Allison, Free American, Jennifer, Brittany, David, Cody, Brian,
[55:21] Speaker 1: Are You My Mum, Rhonda, Carrie, Cattie P, and Lovely.
[55:28] Speaker 1: All right. Well, that's it for me, then. We have
[55:33] Speaker 1: finished another video, so thank you very much for joining me.
[55:36] Speaker 1: And I will see you when you feel inclined to return.
[55:41] Speaker 1: Always a pleasure. Good night. Lots of love to you all.

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