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

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|Title= Rochester State Hospital
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|Title= St Elizabeths Hospital
|Image= 10-18-2007-13a.jpg
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|Image= St_Elizabeth_SH_Kirkbride.jpg
 
|Width= 150px
 
|Width= 150px
|Body= By a special law passed by the Legislature of 1873 and amended in 1874 a tax of $10 on all liquor dealers was assessed to raise a fund for the establishment of a state inebriate asylum which, when completed, was to be maintained by a continuation of the same tax. As soon as a sufficient fund was accumulated the Inebriate Asylum Board purchased a farm of 160 acres, within a mile and a half of the City of Rochester, for $9000, secured plans and began building in 1877. Strong opposition was raised by liquor dealers against this tax as discriminating and unjust. Test cases were tried in the courts and the constitutionality of the law was sustained. At the same time it became apparent and was admitted generally that additional room was much more urgently needed for the care of the rapidly increasing insane of the state than for the care of inebriates. The Legislature of 1878, in view of this and of the determined opposition to an inebriate asylum to be built and maintained on such a plan, repealed the act levying the tax and changed the inebriate asylum to the Second Minnesota Hospital for Insane, which title was later changed to the Rochester State Hospital (in 1883), with the proviso, however, that inebriates should be admitted and cared for and treated at the expense of the state on the same basis as the insane. Accordingly a separate ward was maintained for inebriates until the department was abolished by the Legislature in 1897.  [[Rochester State Hospital|Click here for more...]]
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|Body= In November of 1852 a tract of land overlooking the Anacostia River was purchased for $25,000 from Thomas Blagden. Construction began almost immediately on the center building, a red brick fortress designed in Gothic revival style by Thomas U. Walter, who also designed the dome of the Capital Building. The hospital was built following the Kirkbride Plan, most of the construction of the center building was done by slaves. It opened in 1855 as the Government Hospital for the Insane. The Hospital's early mission, as defined by its founder, the leading mental health reformer Dorothea Dix, was to provide the "most humane care and enlightened curative treatment of the insane of the Army, Navy, and District of Columbia." During the Civil War, wounded soldiers treated here were reluctant to admit that they were in an insane asylum, and said they were at St. Elizabeth's, the colonial name of the land where the Hospital is located. Congress officially changed the Hospital's name to St. Elizabeth's in 1916. By the 1940s, the Hospital complex covering an area of over 300 acres. At its peak, 4,000 people worked and 7,000 patients lived there. It was the first and only federal mental facility with a national scope. The first appropriation towards building the Government Hospital for the Insane was of $100,000, and was made by Congress in 1852 for the purchase of land. The organic act creating the institution and outlining the duties of its officers and providing for the admission of various classes of insane patients was not approved until March 3, 1855. The hospital, however, had been opened for the reception of patients on January 15,1855.  [[St Elizabeths Hospital|Click here for more...]]
 
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Revision as of 05:37, 28 June 2020

Featured Article Of The Week

St Elizabeths Hospital


St Elizabeth SH Kirkbride.jpg

In November of 1852 a tract of land overlooking the Anacostia River was purchased for $25,000 from Thomas Blagden. Construction began almost immediately on the center building, a red brick fortress designed in Gothic revival style by Thomas U. Walter, who also designed the dome of the Capital Building. The hospital was built following the Kirkbride Plan, most of the construction of the center building was done by slaves. It opened in 1855 as the Government Hospital for the Insane. The Hospital's early mission, as defined by its founder, the leading mental health reformer Dorothea Dix, was to provide the "most humane care and enlightened curative treatment of the insane of the Army, Navy, and District of Columbia." During the Civil War, wounded soldiers treated here were reluctant to admit that they were in an insane asylum, and said they were at St. Elizabeth's, the colonial name of the land where the Hospital is located. Congress officially changed the Hospital's name to St. Elizabeth's in 1916. By the 1940s, the Hospital complex covering an area of over 300 acres. At its peak, 4,000 people worked and 7,000 patients lived there. It was the first and only federal mental facility with a national scope. The first appropriation towards building the Government Hospital for the Insane was of $100,000, and was made by Congress in 1852 for the purchase of land. The organic act creating the institution and outlining the duties of its officers and providing for the admission of various classes of insane patients was not approved until March 3, 1855. The hospital, however, had been opened for the reception of patients on January 15,1855. Click here for more...