Difference between revisions of "Portal:Featured Article Of The Week"

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{{FAformat
|Title= Saskatchewan Hospital
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|Title= Danvers State Hospital
|Image= Northbrattleford.png
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|Image= Danvers_state_1875.jpg
 
|Width= 150px
 
|Width= 150px
|Body= Prior to 1905, Saskatchewan patients requiring mental hospital care were sent to Manitoba. In 1907, however, a young provincial health officer, Dr. David Low (1869–1941), was sent by Premier Walter Scott to visit mental hospitals in eastern Canada and the United States in order to prepare recommendations for such care in the province. Low favoured the cottage system, but Dr. C.K. Clarke, a well-known Toronto psychiatrist, demurred; he felt its use would be questionable “for both economic and climatic reasons,” though he admitted that the cottage system “gives ideal conditions for the patients themselves.” Low’s plan, which included removing “all evidence of restraint in the management of the insane,” was abandoned: the Saskatchewan Hospital North Battleford, a large pavilion-style mental institution, was built between 1911 and 1913.
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|Body= Constructed at a cost of $1.5 million, with the estimated yearly per capita cost of patients being $3,000 the hospital originally consisted of two main center buildings, housing the administration, with four radiating wings. The outer wings (A and J) housed the dangerous patients. The administration building measured 90 by 60 feet, with a tower 130 feet tall. Connected in the rear was a building 180 by 60 feet, in which the kitchens, laundries, chapel, and dormitories for the attendants. In the rear is the boiler house of 70 feet square, with boilers of 450 horsepower, used for heating and ventilation. Water was pumped from Middleton Pond. On each side of the administration are the wings, west side was male, east side was female, connected by small square towers, with the exception of the last ones on each side, which are joined by octagonal towers. The former measured 10 feet square, and were used to separate the buildings. The original plan was designed to house 500 patients, with 100 more possible to accommodate in the attic. The buildings that make up the campus are the main hospital, the Bonner medical building, the gray gables, the male and female nurse homes, the male and female tubercular buildings, the repair shops, the mechanics garage, a work farm, a power plant, a gazebo, several homes and cottages, and some other buildings. However, by the late 1930s and 1940s, over 2,000 patients were being housed, and overcrowding was severe.
  
Storey and Van Egmond adapted the many ideas, and along with various other improvements, made the original 700-foot long building better suited for the climate of Saskatchewan. In the end, these improvements, according to a report from the Regina Leader, “have been welded into a uniform whole which will best serve the uses and interests of the people of this Saskatchewan.” The author continued, “in the arrangement of the building and in materials of construction the most modern ideas in asylum building are being used, and the institution will be one of which any province might well be proud.” A reporter from The North Battleford News agreed. In 1913, the paper reported, “The new provincial asylum will soon be completed. It will be one of the most up-to-date institutions for humanity’s afflicted in the Dominion.”
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While the hospital was originally established to provide residential treatment and care to the mentally ill and the criminally insane, its functions expanded to include a training program for nurses in 1889 and a pathological research laboratory in 1895. In the 1890s, Dr. Charles Page, the superintendent, declared mechanical restraint unnecessary and harmful in cases of mental illness. By the 1920s the hospital was operating school clinics to help determine mental deficiency in children. During the 1960s as a result of increased emphasis on alternative methods of treatment, de-institutionalization, and community-based mental health care, the inpatient population started to decrease. Due to budget cuts within the mental health system the hospital was closed in June 1992.  [[Danvers State Hospital|Click here for more...]]
 
 
The government did not spare any expense with the institution. They had initially set aside $450,000 to build just the main building, which came to over seven hundred feet in length and divided into three portions. In the end the complete cost for the institution, including plumbing, equipment, power house, laundry, and the other necessary support buildings was roughly $1,000,000. Still, the investment did not stop there.  [[Saskatchewan Hospital|Click here for more...]]
 
 
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Revision as of 03:58, 14 April 2014

Featured Article Of The Week

Danvers State Hospital


Danvers state 1875.jpg

Constructed at a cost of $1.5 million, with the estimated yearly per capita cost of patients being $3,000 the hospital originally consisted of two main center buildings, housing the administration, with four radiating wings. The outer wings (A and J) housed the dangerous patients. The administration building measured 90 by 60 feet, with a tower 130 feet tall. Connected in the rear was a building 180 by 60 feet, in which the kitchens, laundries, chapel, and dormitories for the attendants. In the rear is the boiler house of 70 feet square, with boilers of 450 horsepower, used for heating and ventilation. Water was pumped from Middleton Pond. On each side of the administration are the wings, west side was male, east side was female, connected by small square towers, with the exception of the last ones on each side, which are joined by octagonal towers. The former measured 10 feet square, and were used to separate the buildings. The original plan was designed to house 500 patients, with 100 more possible to accommodate in the attic. The buildings that make up the campus are the main hospital, the Bonner medical building, the gray gables, the male and female nurse homes, the male and female tubercular buildings, the repair shops, the mechanics garage, a work farm, a power plant, a gazebo, several homes and cottages, and some other buildings. However, by the late 1930s and 1940s, over 2,000 patients were being housed, and overcrowding was severe.

While the hospital was originally established to provide residential treatment and care to the mentally ill and the criminally insane, its functions expanded to include a training program for nurses in 1889 and a pathological research laboratory in 1895. In the 1890s, Dr. Charles Page, the superintendent, declared mechanical restraint unnecessary and harmful in cases of mental illness. By the 1920s the hospital was operating school clinics to help determine mental deficiency in children. During the 1960s as a result of increased emphasis on alternative methods of treatment, de-institutionalization, and community-based mental health care, the inpatient population started to decrease. Due to budget cuts within the mental health system the hospital was closed in June 1992. Click here for more...