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Insanity: Causes, Types, and Treatments
This is a three-part series regarding the historical causes, types, and treatments of insanity in the 19th and 20th centuries. Though focus is primarily on Kentucky institutions, these apply to other institutions throughout the United States. You can visit this page to read Kentucky’s historical lunacy laws. You can also check our glossary of anachronistic…
Kentucky’s Historical Lunacy Laws
Lunacy Laws The following is a compilation of lunacy laws that were established in the Commonwealth of Kentucky up to the year 1883. Please remember to keep these laws in a historical context when reading them. The book, in its entirety, is in the public domain and can be viewed freely online. To view the…
The 1906 Examination for License to Practice Medicine in Kentucky
The following questions were on the examination for licensure to practice medicine in the state of Kentucky in 1906. The questions were taken verbatim. Do you have what it takes to pass the 1906 Board examination to practice medicine? Give it a try! PHYSIOLOGY. 1. Name the glands the secretion of which form the saliva;…
A Micro Case Study of Lobotomy: Miss Sarah Simpson
It was a dry but chilly morning on Thursday, December 8, 1949, when former schoolteacher, Miss Sarah Simpson, walked onto the property of the Booker T. Washington School on Georgetown Street in Lexington. Schoolteacher Miss Marietta Hunter, age 46, was busy starting the day as her students slowly began to pour inside the warm school….
The Historical Use of Restraints in Asylums
According to records from Eastern State Hospital, Lexington, Kentucky, there were several types of mechanical and environmental restraints used on patients. Some of these include camisoles, tying up patients, strong dresses, straitjackets, and the use of seclusion. The following data sample represents the years of 1937 and 1938. They will show the number of patients…
The Marymount Hospital “Serial Killer”
“That little town, they had a lot of guilt to cover up because if they had pursued it further in 1971, the things that happened in Cincinnati would not have come to pass. I would have been arrested then instead of 16 years later.” -Statement from Donald Harvey at the Warren Correctional Institution, Lebanon, Ohio,…
The 1923 Prison Riot at Eddyville
Author’s note: Though most reports, including the death certificate, list Walters’ first name as Monte, there were reports that his name was actually Chester Walters. Additionally, these reports refute the Texas listing as his place of birth and list him as being born in Iowa. For this post, Walters will be referred to as Monte…
A Brief Look at the Use of Psychosurgery
At the 1949 Proceedings of the First Research Conference on Psychosurgery, Charles C. Limburg of the Human Resources Division, Department of the Air Force, presented his research findings, A Survey on the Use of Psychosurgery with Mental Patients in the United States. To begin, Limburg briefly examined a 1949 article written by Lawrence C. Kolb…
A Brief Look at Public Health Nursing in Kentucky
In the early 20th-century in Kentucky, a growing movement to educate the public about communicable and preventable diseases began taking place. Kentuckians and, arguably, many other Americans were reluctantly content with allowing the progression of diseases for any number of reasons; largely due to a lack of public health education and tools needed to combat…
Trachoma in Kentucky
Sonnet inspired by the sight of a Kentucky child who was restored from blindness A little girl am I, that once was blindAnd shut in darkness from the shining day,And God through you, your loving heart and kind,From prison led me to the sun-lit wayWhere other children walk and dance and seeThe waving trees, the…
Kentucky’s Female-Led Bacteriology Laboratory
In 1910, Kentucky’s General Assembly established the Commonwealth’s first State Laboratory of Bacteriology in a tiny room in Bowling Green at St. Joseph’s Hospital. The room cost the state nothing and was also furnished by the hospital. Dr. Lillian H. South was voted, unanimously, as the State Bacteriologist making her among the first women in…
Kentucky Historic Institutions 