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

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|Title= Longue Pointe Asylum
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|Title= Binghamton State Hospital
|Image= V11268.jpg
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|Image= BinghamptonB.jpg
 
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|Body= Founded in 1873, Saint-Jean de Dieu Hospital was born from an agreement between the Government of Quebec and the Congregation of the Sisters of Providence, who were entrusted the task of clothing, lodging and caring of the mentally handicapped. Sister Thérèse de Jésus was the soul and director of this important healthcare facility in Quebec.
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|Body= Built in 1858, the castle originally served as the country's first inebriate asylum. Founder J. Edward Turner belonged to a school of thought that alcoholism wasn't just a vice, but could be cured medically. The well-lit rooms and extensive grounds are an important marker in New York State's view of addiction. The asylum was the first of its kind in the country, but only served its original purpose for 15 years, at which point Turner's inebriate asylum was converted into a hospital for the chronically insane. The asylum faced financial woes for a decade after a great fire broke out in March 1870. Gov. Lucius Robinson deemed it a “complete failure” in 1879, suggesting that the asylum be closed down and renovated to house the insane. In 1881, its doors were reopened as the Binghamton Asylum for the Chronic Insane, later renamed the Binghamton State Hospital. Hundreds of patients were transferred to Binghamton from Utica, Poughkeepsie and Middletown; those patients lived, suffered and died in the palatial asylum. Treatment methods only worsened with the turn of the century.
  
The Sisters of Providence already had a great deal of experience in working with mental patients. Mother Émilie-Gamelin took in a number of them at the Asile de la Providence, as early as 1845. In 1852, their Saint-Isidore farm was renovated to accommodate 17 patients. In 1863, an annex named Saint-Jean de Dieu was built and added to the Sister’s convent in the east end of Montreal.
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In 1942, the hospital instituted electric shock therapy, hydrotherapy and later lobotomy as methods of treatment for the mentally ill. These “treatments” were nothing short of brutally inhumane. Patients were restrained in wet canvas for up to six hours at a time and forced into seizures by means of electric shock. The worst and most terrifying of these treatments was the prefrontal lobotomy, a form of psychosurgery that involved scrambling the frontal lobe of the brain with a sharp metal instrument inserted through the upper eye socket.  [[Binghamton State Hospital|Click here for more...]]
 
 
The construction of the Saint-Jean de Dieu Hospital, then known as the Longue Pointe Lunatic Asylum, would be done on this very site. In April 1874, the Sisters commissioned architect Benjamin Lamontagne to design and build the asylum, north of Notre-Dame St. It is interesting to know that Louis Riel was committed to the Asylum at Longue Pointe for a few months in 1876.  [[Longue Pointe Asylum|Click here for more...]]
 
 
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Revision as of 04:40, 20 September 2020

Featured Article Of The Week

Binghamton State Hospital


BinghamptonB.jpg

Built in 1858, the castle originally served as the country's first inebriate asylum. Founder J. Edward Turner belonged to a school of thought that alcoholism wasn't just a vice, but could be cured medically. The well-lit rooms and extensive grounds are an important marker in New York State's view of addiction. The asylum was the first of its kind in the country, but only served its original purpose for 15 years, at which point Turner's inebriate asylum was converted into a hospital for the chronically insane. The asylum faced financial woes for a decade after a great fire broke out in March 1870. Gov. Lucius Robinson deemed it a “complete failure” in 1879, suggesting that the asylum be closed down and renovated to house the insane. In 1881, its doors were reopened as the Binghamton Asylum for the Chronic Insane, later renamed the Binghamton State Hospital. Hundreds of patients were transferred to Binghamton from Utica, Poughkeepsie and Middletown; those patients lived, suffered and died in the palatial asylum. Treatment methods only worsened with the turn of the century.

In 1942, the hospital instituted electric shock therapy, hydrotherapy and later lobotomy as methods of treatment for the mentally ill. These “treatments” were nothing short of brutally inhumane. Patients were restrained in wet canvas for up to six hours at a time and forced into seizures by means of electric shock. The worst and most terrifying of these treatments was the prefrontal lobotomy, a form of psychosurgery that involved scrambling the frontal lobe of the brain with a sharp metal instrument inserted through the upper eye socket. Click here for more...