March Madness: Bedlam Asylum
Our month of madness and mania would not be complete withut a peek into the world’s most famous asylum — Bethlehem Royal Hospital, better known as Bedlam (and, yes, the source for our word “bedlam”.)
Trying to treat the insane is baffling today — but imagine what it must have been like hundreds of years ago. Thousands of years ago, the insane would have either perished at the mouths of sabre-toothed tigers or risen to become the undisputed leader of their tribe. But hundred of years ago began the notion that everyone deserves some sort of care and that everyone can be cured.
Unfortunately, what came up was arguably not much better than letting get a person tough it out in the woods. It’s because of Bedlam that anyone is terrified of being diagnosed as having a metal illness like depression because they were scared of getting tossed in a modern equivielent of Bedlam. But there’s a big difference between a person with major depression — who still has a grip on reality — and someone who thinks the neighbor’s dog is the Devil.
Bedlam opened up in London in 1247 and shut down in the late 1600’s. Part of the reason for the shut-down was from protests about the poor treatment of the inmates — some even from the inmantes, who had enough wits about them to petition Parliment for help in 1620. However, the facilities weren’t eliminated — just relocated a couple of times before eventually settling in Kent.
Here’s a short experimental film about Bedlam and what is on the original location. If you think about it, there’s not much of a difference between what was there then and what is there now.
March 24th, 2009 at 3:43 pm
[...] Last time on YouTube Digger, we began to look at history’s most notorious insane asylum, Bethlehem Royal Hospital in London (now in Kent), better known as “Bedlam”. It’s unknown how the nickname [...]