Asylum on the Hill: History of a Healing Landscape

Abstract

Asylum on the Hill: History of a Healing Landscape By Katherine Ziff Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2012. 220pp. Tables, maps, notes, photographs, bibliography, and index. $$, (Hardcover). ISBN: 978-0-8214-1973-1.Author Katherine Ziff has written a well-documented text with many photographs, tables, and maps that focus on the site of the Athens Lunatic Asylum (originally named in 1868) (p. xii). The subject of mental health facilities built utilizing the Kirkbride plan is of key importance to preservationists, architectural historians, and others. So many mental health facilities have met with abandonment and demolition over the years. Ziff s text consists of six chapters in total. Three chapters focus on architecture, politics, and landscape, which may interest readers whose concern is in the built environment.The Kirkbride plan was developed by Thomas Story Kirkbride, M.D. in the mid-nineteenth century when American psychiatry was in its infancy. Moral treatment originated with Dr. Philippe Pinel, an asylum physician in Paris, France in 1795 who "allegedly removed chains from his patients and undertook human, compassionate, and supportive care." Pinel referred to his method as traitement morale, meaning ethical, honorable treatment of people suffering from mental illness (p. 7). Moral treatment was believed to be efficacious in treating individuals deemed mentally ill during a time when America was shifting from an agrarian to an industrial-based society. Kirkbride professed that successful treatment addressed within the rolling hills of a therapeutic landscape would bring about healing. "This approach was a radical alternative to well-established aggressive, punitive tactics of curing mental illness with punishment and restraints" (pp. 7-9).A person could be committed to an asylum in the state of Ohio with three documents: medical certification from a physician certifying insanity; a request for commitment from a probate judge listing the name of witnesses; and an asylum document with written acceptance of the patient listing the date, patient number, age, and county of residence (p. 27). Individuals that presented with seizure (epilepsy), exhibited drug/alcohol addictions, attempted suicide, threatened to or actually had harmed others, elderly people with dementia, and those today that would be clinically diagnosed with schizophrenia, depression, and bipolar disorder were regularly admitted to asylums (p. 25).Once admitted men and women were housed separately (p. 72) within winglike extensions from the central administrative area or core (p. 66). The men were housed on the left and the women on the right (p. 64). The patients that were quiet and well-behaved had sleeping areas closest to the central administrative structure and the troublesome, physically obtrusive, and verbally expressive patients were housed in the wings farthest away from the core (p. 66). The lead physician, who was also the superintendent of the asylum, and his family lived on site in a spacious apartment on the second floor that overlooked the asylum's front entrance (p. 73). At the rear of the core, working and living areas for the caregivers, including attendants, cooks, laundresses, and bakers were located (pp. 72-74). Each wing consisted of three stories (p. 76). To maintain the steam powered heating system an engineer, several firemen, and coal-wheelers were employed (p. …