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

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|Title= Metropolitan State Hospital
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|Title= U.S. Narcotics Farm
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|Body= It became apparent that while the mental health system as a whole was overcrowded, the most urgent need was in the metropolitan area. Intense debate over possible solutions occurred in 1908-1926. The Trustees of the newly acquired Boston State Hospital advocated for expansion of thier facility to a 5,000 patient capacity, but were unable to convince the State Board of Insanity of the merits of that proposal. The need for a second metropolitan area hospital was identified as early as 1908.
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|Body= For nearly four decades, from the 1930s to the '70s, Lexington was a center for drug research and treatment. It drew addicts talented and desperate, obscure and celebrated, and provided free treatment and more: job training, sports, dental help, music lessons, even manicures. Research done there, much of it conducted with volunteer human subjects, yielded insights into drug addiction that still resonate today.
  
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Introduced to the state legislature in 1912, the board authorized spending in January of 1915. A site that was in close proximity to the Walter E. Fernald State School was immediately acquired. Plans were prepared for a 1,900 patient facility to be built on the cottage/colony plan. No action was taken for several years due to the Trustees of Boston State Hospital continue to argue for their own expansion and the first World War diverted state attention and funds.
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Jazz greats Chet Baker and Elvin Jones took the Lexington Cure. So did William S. Burroughs and his son, both of whom wrote about it. The father described the grueling detox but opined that the food was excellent. The son wrote about the place's isolation, and the joys of landing an easy job on-site.
  
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Finally, in 1927, the State legislature responded by appropriating $1,500,000 for preparation of the Waltham site. The ground breaking ceremony took place on December 27, 1927 at the Administration Building. Cornerstone laying ceremonies were held on October 17, 1928. Construction costs were kept down by the use of the plain red brick buildings of early American colonial type. Trim elements, including pedimented pavilions and quoins, were deleted from the ward buildings. As the first campus developed in the automobile age, Met State did not require immediate adjacency to railroad facilities. As the most recent of the State's institutional treatment centers for the insane Metropolitan State Hospital represented the third and final stage in the evolving form of hospitals for the mentally ill. Like its predecessors, the Kirkbride and cottage/colony, it responded to increases in patient populations within the constraints of a publicly funded budget which both often failed.  [[Metropolitan State Hospital|Click here for more...]]
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A 1930s New Deal era project, Narco was a joint venture of the Public Health Service and the Bureau of Prisons. The notion that thorny problems are best solved by a centralized bureaucracy is a concept that has seen happier days, but Narco's founders were sure that government, fueled by money and manpower, could change a nation's social landscape — from Lexington and a facility in Fort Worth Texas, that opened in 1938.
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Lexington's countryside setting was important because this was a project that idealized rural life, built on a belief that if you turned up hopelessly addicted and worked in the sun, learned wholesome values, got dental care and played golf, maybe you could leave drugs behind. The nation, in the throes of the Depression, was flush with ambition if not cash, and drug addiction was seen as more of a bad habit than a brain-based physiological craving. But the odds of success with treatment at Narco were, it turned out, abysmally bad — as low as 7 percent, according to a 1962 survey.  [[U.S. Narcotics Farm|Click here for more...]]
 
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Revision as of 03:45, 11 January 2016

Featured Article Of The Week

U.S. Narcotics Farm


Fmc10.jpg

For nearly four decades, from the 1930s to the '70s, Lexington was a center for drug research and treatment. It drew addicts talented and desperate, obscure and celebrated, and provided free treatment and more: job training, sports, dental help, music lessons, even manicures. Research done there, much of it conducted with volunteer human subjects, yielded insights into drug addiction that still resonate today.

Jazz greats Chet Baker and Elvin Jones took the Lexington Cure. So did William S. Burroughs and his son, both of whom wrote about it. The father described the grueling detox but opined that the food was excellent. The son wrote about the place's isolation, and the joys of landing an easy job on-site.

A 1930s New Deal era project, Narco was a joint venture of the Public Health Service and the Bureau of Prisons. The notion that thorny problems are best solved by a centralized bureaucracy is a concept that has seen happier days, but Narco's founders were sure that government, fueled by money and manpower, could change a nation's social landscape — from Lexington and a facility in Fort Worth Texas, that opened in 1938.

Lexington's countryside setting was important because this was a project that idealized rural life, built on a belief that if you turned up hopelessly addicted and worked in the sun, learned wholesome values, got dental care and played golf, maybe you could leave drugs behind. The nation, in the throes of the Depression, was flush with ambition if not cash, and drug addiction was seen as more of a bad habit than a brain-based physiological craving. But the odds of success with treatment at Narco were, it turned out, abysmally bad — as low as 7 percent, according to a 1962 survey. Click here for more...

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