WEBVTT - Ever True to Thee 0:00:01.960 --> 0:00:06.439 Mississippi State Hospital Museum that. 0:00:06.960 --> 0:00:09.840 We're standing in a hallway at the Mississippi State Hospital 0:00:09.880 --> 0:00:13.160 at Whitfield, one of a handful of state run residential 0:00:13.160 --> 0:00:17.480 mental health facilities still operating here. It's my first time 0:00:17.600 --> 0:00:20.840 really seeing the hospital, but I've heard about it my 0:00:20.920 --> 0:00:26.680 whole life. Everyone in Mississippi has. 0:00:29.120 --> 0:00:32.480 It was the threat that your family always gave you. 0:00:32.600 --> 0:00:34.640 If you act crazy, you'll go to Whitfield. 0:00:34.840 --> 0:00:38.640 Oh yeah, people see you do that. You're going to Whitfield. 0:00:38.200 --> 0:00:40.200 If you don't behave I'm going. 0:00:40.120 --> 0:00:42.200 To take competer Whitfield. 0:00:42.200 --> 0:00:43.000 What you out? 0:00:45.840 --> 0:00:46.440 Whitfield. 0:00:47.440 --> 0:00:51.040 That's the informal name for the Mississippi State Hospital. It's 0:00:51.080 --> 0:00:54.760 been Mississippi's primary mental health facility since nineteen thirty five, 0:00:55.000 --> 0:00:57.600 when the state shuttered the old asylum in Jackson and 0:00:57.680 --> 0:01:01.480 moved those patients out here. It's that place your mom 0:01:01.600 --> 0:01:04.480 says you'll go if you don't act right, the place 0:01:04.520 --> 0:01:09.760 your friend's neighbor got sent. It has mythic status in Mississippi. 0:01:10.959 --> 0:01:14.039 But standing here in a marble room full of outdated 0:01:14.080 --> 0:01:19.760 therapy equipment, wod Field's not scary. It's quaint, at least 0:01:19.760 --> 0:01:22.520 in the museum. Hard to say how much of that 0:01:22.600 --> 0:01:25.199 is because of our tour guides, Donna Brown and Kathy Denton. 0:01:25.840 --> 0:01:29.240 These two have been here for decades and know everything 0:01:29.360 --> 0:01:33.000 about the place. Donna took the lead with Kathy chiming in. 0:01:34.560 --> 0:01:36.680 I noticed a black and white photo of a woman 0:01:36.760 --> 0:01:38.440 in what looks like a shower. 0:01:38.880 --> 0:01:40.200 The lady in the shower. 0:01:40.360 --> 0:01:43.760 They had to pencil in Panny and broad hard cuf 0:01:44.680 --> 0:01:47.319 it was pornography for nineteen thirty eight. 0:01:49.560 --> 0:01:52.960 It's a quirky museum. There's a display of patient run 0:01:53.000 --> 0:01:58.800 newspapers and literary magazines, and then around the corner posters 0:01:58.800 --> 0:02:03.040 for movies were Whitfield makes a cameo, including the Sandra 0:02:03.080 --> 0:02:05.040 Bullet classic A Time to Kill. 0:02:05.640 --> 0:02:10.680 The scene in the movie where she breaks into the 0:02:10.720 --> 0:02:15.359 psychiatrist's office was filmed in the building that you passed 0:02:16.040 --> 0:02:17.560 on the way to this one and. 0:02:17.560 --> 0:02:18.280 The Beast within. 0:02:18.480 --> 0:02:21.040 You watch a lot of it on YouTube, but you're 0:02:21.160 --> 0:02:24.480 going to recognize very little of the hospital. There's a 0:02:24.480 --> 0:02:27.480 lot of screaming and running and dark. 0:02:34.440 --> 0:02:36.400 Part of the museum is housed in one of what 0:02:36.600 --> 0:02:42.240 Field's old hydrotherapy units. Hydrotherapy basically means using water as 0:02:42.320 --> 0:02:46.119 medical treatment for physical or mental health. If you ever 0:02:46.120 --> 0:02:49.080 taken a dip at a spa, you've had hydrotherapy. 0:02:49.680 --> 0:02:50.840 Today you can go the spa. 0:02:51.000 --> 0:02:55.640 They'll wrap you in mud, sand, alojl seaweed, coffee grounds, tea, leave. 0:02:55.600 --> 0:02:56.440 Salt, sugar. 0:02:57.040 --> 0:03:00.200 The most expensive one I've found is Pink Indie in 0:03:00.440 --> 0:03:04.920 sand in New Orleans, twelve hundred dollars forty five minutes. 0:03:06.040 --> 0:03:08.119 Back in the day, it was on the bleeding edge 0:03:08.120 --> 0:03:11.920 of mental health care, Woodfield hydrotherapy, and it consisted of 0:03:11.960 --> 0:03:15.200 several rooms of white marble from the floor all the 0:03:15.240 --> 0:03:18.320 way up to the ceiling, and the kind of porcelain 0:03:18.440 --> 0:03:22.720 sinks and claw footed tubs that an HGTV host would. 0:03:22.680 --> 0:03:24.919 Kill for hydro therapy does. 0:03:25.000 --> 0:03:28.600 Now, this is by far the treatment of choice. Just 0:03:28.639 --> 0:03:32.120 a long soak and a big old back, yeah big. 0:03:32.440 --> 0:03:36.320 But other hydrotherapy practices were more brutal than relaxing. 0:03:37.000 --> 0:03:40.200 Now, this is a needle spray shower or a Scotch shower. 0:03:40.440 --> 0:03:43.160 He's one of these nozzles. Control the jet of the 0:03:43.240 --> 0:03:47.080 water cold here, hot, here, back and forth. The doctor 0:03:47.120 --> 0:03:50.960 would literally write a prescription. The patient would come in, 0:03:51.120 --> 0:03:53.240 go to the center, hold on to the bars. 0:03:53.600 --> 0:03:57.120 She would start spraying the formula. See the petals. 0:03:57.160 --> 0:03:59.920 They're not here today, but at control of the intensity 0:04:00.200 --> 0:04:00.760 via water. 0:04:02.080 --> 0:04:04.360 If you've seen one flew over the cuckoo's nest, it's 0:04:04.400 --> 0:04:09.000 easy to imagine a sadistic nurse ratchet gleefully blasting patients 0:04:09.040 --> 0:04:13.920 into submission. But the first antipsychotic drug wasn't introduced until 0:04:13.920 --> 0:04:18.440 the nineteen fifties, nearly one hundred years after Mississippi opened 0:04:18.440 --> 0:04:22.440 its original State asylum. Donna tells us that the doctors 0:04:22.480 --> 0:04:26.279 of that era really believed that this was an effective treatment. 0:04:27.480 --> 0:04:30.400 Donna waved us toward another room. This one was almost 0:04:30.440 --> 0:04:33.839 like a grotto with a big slab smack dab in 0:04:33.880 --> 0:04:37.520 the middle like an altar. That's where the patients would 0:04:37.560 --> 0:04:38.080 be placed. 0:04:38.680 --> 0:04:40.320 This is a wet pag treatment. 0:04:40.440 --> 0:04:44.520 When he came, he was very many, very fidgetive. They 0:04:44.560 --> 0:04:48.800 wanted to calm him down, so they wrapped him in 0:04:49.000 --> 0:04:52.360 sheets as tind as they could, much like a swaddled baby. 0:04:52.640 --> 0:04:56.200 Got him on the table, hot and cold water faucetsteads soaking. 0:04:56.360 --> 0:05:01.120 Now, before we exit the hydrotherapy unit, Donna reads us. 0:05:01.080 --> 0:05:08.120 Upon meditation and hydrotherapy, Theodore Rothkey six hours a day, 0:05:08.400 --> 0:05:12.440 I lay me down within this tub that cannot drown. 0:05:13.240 --> 0:05:17.880 Within this primal element, the flesh is willing to repent. 0:05:18.600 --> 0:05:22.040 I do not laugh, I do not cry. I'm sweating 0:05:22.080 --> 0:05:26.160 out the will to die. My past is sliding. 0:05:25.760 --> 0:05:26.559 Down the drain. 0:05:27.200 --> 0:05:29.360 I soon will be myself again. 0:05:34.839 --> 0:05:37.479 I wish Theodore ret Key were still around, because I'd 0:05:37.520 --> 0:05:40.960 love to ask him about that last line. Is it 0:05:41.040 --> 0:05:44.640 sarcastic or did he really feel like an ice bath 0:05:44.800 --> 0:05:48.520 restored his sanity? Was he just hoping that it would. 0:05:50.400 --> 0:05:52.920 The more I've listen, the more I hear irony, and 0:05:53.520 --> 0:05:57.200 I soon will be myself again. But maybe that's because 0:05:57.240 --> 0:05:59.560 of the place asylums have come to occupy in my 0:06:00.120 --> 0:06:04.480 or really in the American imagination. It's a place of 0:06:04.480 --> 0:06:08.360 broken promises. You're supposed to get better, but in most 0:06:08.360 --> 0:06:13.719 stories I've read, most movies I've seen, the opposite happens. 0:06:14.240 --> 0:06:17.799 Maybe that's why they's such a popular setting for horror films. 0:06:21.200 --> 0:06:24.440 That may be the narrative we have today, but it's 0:06:24.480 --> 0:06:29.120 not the one the asylum started with. The promise of 0:06:29.160 --> 0:06:32.239 the Old Asylum was that it was a place for healing, 0:06:33.960 --> 0:06:36.400 But over one third of the patients who passed through 0:06:36.400 --> 0:06:39.720 the Old asylum's doors died within them. 0:06:41.680 --> 0:06:45.120 The popular narrative is that it was great when it 0:06:45.160 --> 0:06:48.920 started out and then it just went downhill. The true narrative, 0:06:49.000 --> 0:06:51.520 I think, is just a much more complicated than that. 0:06:54.000 --> 0:06:58.880 So how exactly did this promise break? I'm Larison Campbell 0:06:59.360 --> 0:07:10.720 in This is under Yazuklay. When word got out back 0:07:10.720 --> 0:07:13.360 in twenty twelve that thousands of bodies had been found 0:07:13.360 --> 0:07:17.640 at the site of Mississippi's Old Asylum, the news spread fast. 0:07:18.360 --> 0:07:20.840 This is the University of Mississippi Medical Center. 0:07:20.960 --> 0:07:23.560 Its campus is home to six health science schools, more 0:07:23.600 --> 0:07:26.920 than three thousand students, and thousands of unmarked graves. 0:07:27.480 --> 0:07:29.360 It hit that viral sweet spot. 0:07:29.840 --> 0:07:33.920 A horror movie and one headline not just confirming our 0:07:34.040 --> 0:07:38.720 dark expectations but exceeding them. It's death and drama in 0:07:38.760 --> 0:07:42.480 the Old South and a lunatic asylum all bald into one. 0:07:43.080 --> 0:07:46.560 What ends up is the Southern Gothic, the terrain of terror. 0:07:47.200 --> 0:07:52.000 That's Mab Secrest. Southern scholar and historical author. Mab spent 0:07:52.040 --> 0:07:56.560 more than fifteen years researching and studying Georgia's Millageville Asylum. 0:07:56.960 --> 0:08:00.680 Because this isn't just a Mississippi story. Any states had 0:08:00.720 --> 0:08:04.240 asylums in and out of the South. But the terrain 0:08:04.360 --> 0:08:08.040 of terror that mAbs describing, that's not the way things 0:08:08.040 --> 0:08:12.080 started out for our old asylum. 0:08:10.920 --> 0:08:15.280 Starts off is a story about Enlightenment optimism, and it 0:08:15.320 --> 0:08:17.280 starts in Europe, and it comes to this country. 0:08:19.760 --> 0:08:24.560 That enlightenment, she mentions, is the Enlightenment, that glowing moment 0:08:24.680 --> 0:08:27.840 of philosophy and reason in Europe between the seventeenth and 0:08:27.920 --> 0:08:32.680 nineteenth centuries. Eventually, these ideals made their way across the pond. 0:08:33.640 --> 0:08:38.040 Until people were enlightened. Society's primary solution for dealing with 0:08:38.080 --> 0:08:43.679 severe mental illness was simple isolation or restraint, sometimes both. 0:08:44.840 --> 0:08:47.680 That could mean the family home behind a locked door 0:08:47.720 --> 0:08:50.520 in a back room, or if you're a first wife 0:08:50.520 --> 0:08:55.400 of Victorian literature, in the attic. For those whose families 0:08:55.440 --> 0:08:59.280 couldn't care for them, there were public almshouses and the 0:08:59.320 --> 0:09:04.320 county jail. How far we've come. Physical restraints were common, 0:09:04.720 --> 0:09:10.960 sanitation standards non existent. Dungeons were a real thing. The 0:09:11.000 --> 0:09:13.839 goal here separate the ill person. 0:09:13.760 --> 0:09:15.319 From the non ill community. 0:09:16.640 --> 0:09:20.960 But as Enlightenment ideas called on, as medicine and science 0:09:21.040 --> 0:09:25.320 became more robust, doctors began to argue that mental illness 0:09:25.400 --> 0:09:28.160 was a problem society could actually solve. 0:09:28.920 --> 0:09:32.560 Doctors start to believe that you can heal the troubled 0:09:32.640 --> 0:09:38.520 mind if you change the environment, and if you put 0:09:38.520 --> 0:09:41.960 them in a beautiful place. Then you give them doctors 0:09:42.000 --> 0:09:44.880 who pay attention and listen to them, you give them 0:09:44.880 --> 0:09:49.000 good nutrition, you give them a beautiful setting, and you 0:09:49.120 --> 0:09:51.320 give them some occupational therapy. 0:09:51.360 --> 0:09:54.200 Then they'll get better. It's called the moral therapy. 0:09:54.760 --> 0:09:57.199 But you could cure people about changing structures, which is 0:09:57.240 --> 0:10:00.960 a very progressive idea, and you know, can really cure 0:10:01.000 --> 0:10:03.280 insanity with these different hospitals. 0:10:05.360 --> 0:10:10.040 It was a revolutionary idea. Change a person's outside environment 0:10:10.760 --> 0:10:16.880 and they'll change internally. But in practical terms, what does 0:10:16.920 --> 0:10:23.800 the infrastructure of calm quietude look like? In the eighteen forties, 0:10:24.000 --> 0:10:26.120 a physician in Philadelphia came up with an. 0:10:26.000 --> 0:10:30.920 Answer, Thomas Kirkbride, who was a psychiatrist who was very 0:10:31.160 --> 0:10:34.120 devoted to taking care of people with mental health issues. 0:10:34.559 --> 0:10:36.320 And you know, it's this whole idea that if you 0:10:36.480 --> 0:10:39.200 just get away from the normal pressures of life and 0:10:39.240 --> 0:10:42.000 have a little time to breathe and to enjoy the 0:10:42.040 --> 0:10:44.560 fresh air and to be taken care of, then you'll 0:10:44.600 --> 0:10:47.600 get better and you can return to life as a 0:10:47.640 --> 0:10:48.600 normal citizen. 0:10:49.520 --> 0:10:52.680 That was Leida Gibson, coordinator of the Asylum Hill Project. 0:10:55.559 --> 0:10:58.840 Thomas Kirkbride would later formalize his plan into a magnum 0:10:58.920 --> 0:11:04.280 opus with a title on the Construction, Organization and General 0:11:04.360 --> 0:11:07.480 Arrangements of Hospitals for the Insane, with some remarks on 0:11:07.520 --> 0:11:08.959 insanity and its treatment. 0:11:09.800 --> 0:11:10.640 He was specific. 0:11:11.640 --> 0:11:15.679 The plan included exact staff numbers, roles, and even salaries. 0:11:16.040 --> 0:11:18.920 He drew up measurements for rooms and windows and the 0:11:18.920 --> 0:11:22.280 space between windows down to the inch. 0:11:22.800 --> 0:11:23.840 The kirkbry Plan. 0:11:24.320 --> 0:11:26.400 The idea was that you had to have a certain 0:11:26.440 --> 0:11:30.200 amount of cubic feet of air space in order to 0:11:30.600 --> 0:11:35.360 get well. These were rooms with really tall ceilings. They 0:11:35.440 --> 0:11:38.720 had huge windows. The patients could open the windows and 0:11:38.760 --> 0:11:40.760 you'll notice from the plan there's a haul down the 0:11:40.760 --> 0:11:44.079 middle and then every room on every side has a window. 0:11:44.640 --> 0:11:46.920 People had their own rooms when it first started. I 0:11:46.920 --> 0:11:49.720 mean this would be like a luxurious dorm room. 0:11:50.760 --> 0:11:51.240 It called on. 0:11:52.200 --> 0:11:55.480 The first was in Trenton, New Jersey. Other states followed. 0:11:55.920 --> 0:11:58.760 The Mississippi State Lunatic Asylum was one of the first 0:11:58.800 --> 0:12:01.920 dozen in the country. In the first Kirkbright Hospital in 0:12:01.960 --> 0:12:06.120 the Deep South. Just to ground you in the timeline 0:12:06.160 --> 0:12:09.720 real quick. The Mississippi State Lunatic Asylum opened its doors 0:12:09.800 --> 0:12:12.960 in eighteen fifty five. It had taken five years to 0:12:13.000 --> 0:12:15.680 complete at a cost of one hundred and seventy five 0:12:15.800 --> 0:12:20.439 thousand dollars. That's about seven million in today's money. If 0:12:20.480 --> 0:12:24.000 this level of benevolence and generosity for Mississippians with mental 0:12:24.040 --> 0:12:27.400 illness seems out of character for a state government whose 0:12:27.440 --> 0:12:32.560 focus was keeping slavery legal, don't worry. The decision to 0:12:32.600 --> 0:12:35.600 build this asylum to look after a quote less fortunate 0:12:35.640 --> 0:12:39.280 Mississippians does not buck the narrative you've come to know. 0:12:44.480 --> 0:12:48.119 Let's say it's the eighteen fifties. You're a Mississippi lawmaker 0:12:48.360 --> 0:12:51.280 trying to put a shine on an image badly tarnished 0:12:51.320 --> 0:12:55.360 by I don't know, your refusal to stop treating humans 0:12:55.480 --> 0:12:59.920 like chattel. Maybe investing in this monument to those Enlightenment 0:13:00.120 --> 0:13:04.520 ideals of individual liberty natural rights in the social contract 0:13:05.240 --> 0:13:07.719 starts to seem like a good way to thumb your 0:13:07.800 --> 0:13:12.359 nose all those Yankees crying about the immorality of slavery, 0:13:13.240 --> 0:13:15.720 a sort of see we're not all bad. 0:13:16.520 --> 0:13:22.320 Perhaps It's not so pointed in the institutional records, but 0:13:22.600 --> 0:13:25.200 you read between the lines and you say, you know, 0:13:25.480 --> 0:13:29.840 look at what we do for those unfortunates among us. 0:13:30.400 --> 0:13:32.240 They did not use the words. 0:13:31.840 --> 0:13:36.360 That would be that would be acceptable today, but and 0:13:36.440 --> 0:13:38.880 this became something that they could point to. 0:13:39.320 --> 0:13:41.280 This was the most. 0:13:41.080 --> 0:13:44.920 Impressive structure in the state that remained after the Civil War. 0:13:45.360 --> 0:13:49.920 This was sort of a monument to the goodness of 0:13:50.400 --> 0:13:51.720 Mississippi leaders. 0:13:54.120 --> 0:13:57.040 And that's exactly what a nurse named Dorothea Dix was 0:13:57.080 --> 0:14:02.439 banking on. Probably heard her name before, because Dicks almost 0:14:02.480 --> 0:14:07.160 single handedly created the first generation of state asylums in 0:14:07.200 --> 0:14:11.240 the eighteen forties. Dorothea Dix turned Kirkbride's asylum plan into 0:14:11.320 --> 0:14:15.040 something of a road show, lobbying state legislatures in the 0:14:15.080 --> 0:14:17.599 North and the South to build these hospitals. 0:14:18.440 --> 0:14:23.160 Reading about Dorothea Dix was very instructive to me on 0:14:23.200 --> 0:14:26.360 the relationships of mental hospitals in the South versus the 0:14:26.440 --> 0:14:29.200 North in an environment of growing abolition. 0:14:30.120 --> 0:14:33.120 She began her career as a teacher, but on March 0:14:33.160 --> 0:14:36.640 twenty eighth, eighteen forty one, the thirty five year old 0:14:36.680 --> 0:14:39.200 went to teach a Sunday school class at East Cambridge 0:14:39.200 --> 0:14:43.240 House of Corrections in Massachusetts. There she found groups of 0:14:43.280 --> 0:14:49.240 women experiencing psychiatric conditions. They were chained in dirty, unheated cells. 0:14:50.280 --> 0:14:52.840 Many had never committed a crime but were locked up 0:14:52.880 --> 0:14:58.119 with violent felons. They'd been starved, tortured, and sexually assaulted. 0:14:59.240 --> 0:15:02.200 From that day forward, she became a tireless advocate for 0:15:02.240 --> 0:15:04.800 better treatment for people with mental illness. 0:15:05.200 --> 0:15:08.880 And Dorothea Dix is one of the heroines of the 0:15:09.200 --> 0:15:13.960 humane treatment of insane people and institutions, especially this Kirkbride model, 0:15:14.000 --> 0:15:16.320 which was supposed to kind of separate out and bring 0:15:16.360 --> 0:15:19.400 them in, and it's a whole architecture of sanity in 0:15:19.440 --> 0:15:19.920 that way. 0:15:20.760 --> 0:15:24.120 In Mississippi, she presented the state legislature with the findings 0:15:24.120 --> 0:15:27.360 from a study she'd done. She told them how Mississippians 0:15:27.360 --> 0:15:30.400 with mental illness were living in poverty and all alone, 0:15:31.080 --> 0:15:35.920 often quote chained in closets and attics, in jails or dungeons. 0:15:36.600 --> 0:15:41.120 Mississippi lawmakers were blown away. They appropriated the full amount 0:15:41.160 --> 0:15:45.000 requested fifty thousand dollars for the construction of a new 0:15:45.040 --> 0:15:51.080 state asylum, and then they made their first mistake because 0:15:51.120 --> 0:15:54.280 they picked a site right at the thickest part of 0:15:54.280 --> 0:16:00.000 that Yazoo clay. The foundation was laid and then relayed, 0:16:01.000 --> 0:16:12.640 more building delays, more structural problems. The Mississippi State Lunatic 0:16:12.640 --> 0:16:16.200 Asylum finally opened its doors, more than one hundred and 0:16:16.360 --> 0:16:21.120 twenty five thousand dollars over that initial budget. But it 0:16:21.240 --> 0:16:24.760 was a beautiful neoclassical building with a thirty five foot 0:16:24.800 --> 0:16:29.320 tall portico supported by six doric columns visible all the 0:16:29.320 --> 0:16:33.080 way down to Fortification Street about a mile away. It 0:16:33.160 --> 0:16:36.720 had a capacity for two hundred and fifty patients. Remember 0:16:36.720 --> 0:16:42.200 that number. The grandiosity of the architecture speaks to the 0:16:42.280 --> 0:16:44.600 grand plans Mississippi. 0:16:43.920 --> 0:16:44.720 Had for the place. 0:16:45.640 --> 0:16:49.800 This wasn't a warehouse for the community's problems. Warehouses don't 0:16:49.840 --> 0:16:53.480 get columns and kubolas. This was a place that would 0:16:53.600 --> 0:16:57.920 cure people. After all. This was the era of rapidly 0:16:57.960 --> 0:17:02.720 evolving medical treatment. In the nineteenth century, Doctors began to 0:17:02.800 --> 0:17:08.000 link dirt and filth with disease. Cities began installing sewage 0:17:08.040 --> 0:17:13.040 and sanitation systems. Germs themselves still hadn't been discovered, but 0:17:13.320 --> 0:17:17.720 concepts of germ theory were there. A smallpox vaccine, Cholera's 0:17:17.760 --> 0:17:23.359 connection to contaminated water. Science was beginning to conquer physical maladies, 0:17:24.200 --> 0:17:29.880 why should disease of the mind be any different. There's 0:17:29.880 --> 0:17:36.320 something else we haven't told you about Dorothea Dix, something 0:17:36.359 --> 0:17:39.720 that probably helped her connect with lawmakers in the Antebellum South. 0:17:42.000 --> 0:17:45.639 She in fact is very, i would say viryingly anti 0:17:45.640 --> 0:17:50.040 black racist. Dorothya Dix didn't link black people, and she 0:17:50.160 --> 0:17:52.679 thought that insane people were treated with some black people. 0:17:53.359 --> 0:17:55.600 So Southern legislators loved her. 0:17:56.640 --> 0:18:00.320 And when black patients were admitted, their quality of care 0:18:00.920 --> 0:18:02.440 was substantially lower. 0:18:03.359 --> 0:18:07.480 Sod they were initially a separate wing for the black patients, 0:18:07.520 --> 0:18:11.280 and then very quickly they built annexes off the back 0:18:11.760 --> 0:18:15.120 that were three stories as well. But you know, obviously 0:18:15.160 --> 0:18:18.560 they weren't as big and spacious as the initial. 0:18:18.200 --> 0:18:24.040 Structure, meaning these facilities for the black patients. They never 0:18:24.119 --> 0:18:27.520 even tried to adhere to the Kirkbride plan, which was 0:18:27.560 --> 0:18:30.679 the whole reason the asylum was built in the first place. 0:18:36.480 --> 0:18:39.440 In order for the quote curative properties of the Kirkbride 0:18:39.440 --> 0:18:44.240 model to work, the patients need physical space, big private rooms, 0:18:44.359 --> 0:18:48.840 fresh air, careful attention from doctors and nurses, and if 0:18:48.920 --> 0:18:52.040 patients aren't recovering enough to be released. It creates a 0:18:52.080 --> 0:18:57.040 backlog crowding, and then even the patients who could have 0:18:57.080 --> 0:19:01.080 been helped by the Kirkbride plan no longer getting better. 0:19:03.119 --> 0:19:06.320 Part of the reason for the overcrowding many of the 0:19:06.320 --> 0:19:09.640 people living and dying at the Old Asylum weren't mentally ill. 0:19:11.040 --> 0:19:22.320 That's after the break. The largest art museum in the state, 0:19:22.600 --> 0:19:25.520 the Mississippi Museum of Art, connects Mississippi to the world 0:19:25.720 --> 0:19:28.200 and the power of art to the power of community. 0:19:28.640 --> 0:19:32.280 Located in downtown Jackson, the museum's permanent collection is free 0:19:32.320 --> 0:19:36.320 to the public. National and international exhibitions rotate throughout the year, 0:19:36.640 --> 0:19:40.239 allowing visitors to experience works from around the world. The 0:19:40.280 --> 0:19:43.240 gardens at Expansive Lawn at the Mississippi Museum of Art 0:19:43.240 --> 0:19:46.280 are home to art installations in a variety of events 0:19:46.400 --> 0:19:50.760 for all ages. Plan your visit today at MS museumart 0:19:51.080 --> 0:19:51.640 dot org. 0:19:52.160 --> 0:19:54.520 That's MS Museum art dot org. 0:19:58.359 --> 0:20:00.159 This right here is very interesting. 0:20:00.200 --> 0:20:03.720 It's a register for the Mississippi State Lunatic Asylum. 0:20:04.560 --> 0:20:07.359 While at the Woodfield Museum, my producer Rebecca and I 0:20:07.400 --> 0:20:11.240 came across a giant ledger easily five inches thick with 0:20:11.520 --> 0:20:15.040 hundreds of pages. Each page was a list of names, 0:20:15.280 --> 0:20:20.040 then census details like gender, age, race, written in neat cursive, 0:20:20.640 --> 0:20:23.320 along with the reason each patient was admitted. 0:20:25.600 --> 0:20:28.960 Oh, oh ill. 0:20:28.760 --> 0:20:37.840 Health, menopause, Yes, PMS is in here somewhere, okay, agree, 0:20:38.359 --> 0:20:39.480 fright a couplet? 0:20:41.160 --> 0:20:50.359 Religion, Yeah, grief, fright, PMS, religion. These were some of 0:20:50.400 --> 0:20:55.399 the causes for institutionalization noted during patient intakes. With so 0:20:55.520 --> 0:20:59.399 many possible reasons for admission, maybe it's no surprise that 0:20:59.440 --> 0:21:00.760 the place got overcrowded. 0:21:01.440 --> 0:21:04.720 Yes, So the Kirkbright Plan in general, and certainly the 0:21:04.760 --> 0:21:08.440 institution in Mississippi was established for those people who could 0:21:08.480 --> 0:21:12.800 be cured. It was never meant as a place to 0:21:13.280 --> 0:21:15.640 where people would live out their lives, but there were 0:21:15.640 --> 0:21:18.800 no other options. So what do you do with somebody 0:21:18.800 --> 0:21:22.159 who is having epileptic seizures all day long? What do 0:21:22.240 --> 0:21:25.399 you do with people who are never going to get better? 0:21:25.960 --> 0:21:31.160 And you know, this idea that people who had been 0:21:31.320 --> 0:21:34.359 dethroned of reason were the only people that this institution 0:21:34.960 --> 0:21:38.639 could serve was just not realistic from the beginning. And 0:21:38.720 --> 0:21:41.919 I think that's the popular narrative that they just said, 0:21:42.400 --> 0:21:46.399 you know, okay, We're going to just become everything to 0:21:46.480 --> 0:21:49.640 all these people who need different things. They simply were 0:21:49.720 --> 0:21:52.959 reacting to the situation at the time. And you know, 0:21:53.600 --> 0:21:55.760 in a couple of the reports, people say, what are 0:21:55.800 --> 0:21:58.440 we supposed to do when people show up at the door? 0:21:58.960 --> 0:22:01.240 Are we supposed to just leave them out on the streets? 0:22:01.720 --> 0:22:03.760 And so there were a lot of people who were 0:22:03.800 --> 0:22:08.239 accepted in the asylum, and there was an acknowledgement that 0:22:08.280 --> 0:22:11.920 they weren't going to get better. So the philosophy never 0:22:11.960 --> 0:22:16.080 really changed. It was simply that they had to deal 0:22:16.160 --> 0:22:17.960 with the cards they were dealt. 0:22:19.560 --> 0:22:23.520 One of the cards Mississippi got dealt a disease called palagra. 0:22:24.359 --> 0:22:26.640 You heard about it from Wayne Lee the grave Delzer. 0:22:27.400 --> 0:22:30.119 It's that nutritional deficiency that killed his grandfather. 0:22:30.880 --> 0:22:33.000 He wasn't crazy, he was just starving. 0:22:33.760 --> 0:22:36.600 I mean, I had never even heard of palagra before. 0:22:36.920 --> 0:22:43.320 So palagor was a nutritional deficiency that just swept the Southeast. 0:22:42.800 --> 0:22:44.200 Starting at about nineteen ten. 0:22:45.000 --> 0:22:52.879 And it's characterized by what they call the four d's, dermatitis, diarrhea, dementia, 0:22:53.320 --> 0:22:57.879 death in that order, people from all walks of life 0:22:58.000 --> 0:23:02.200 would come down with palagra. Of course, the dementia wasn't 0:23:02.200 --> 0:23:07.760 apparent until close to the end, so many many patients, 0:23:08.080 --> 0:23:12.360 especially those from the Delta, were admitted with polagra, and 0:23:13.640 --> 0:23:16.480 in the institutional reports they talk about, you know, by 0:23:16.520 --> 0:23:19.120 the time they get here, it's too late to do anything. 0:23:22.119 --> 0:23:26.000 Palagora was not only an epidemic for decades, it remained 0:23:26.000 --> 0:23:27.600 a medical mystery with. 0:23:27.600 --> 0:23:30.480 A geographic preference the Southeast. 0:23:32.480 --> 0:23:36.040 By the late nineteen thirties, three million Americans total had 0:23:36.040 --> 0:23:41.399 contracted palagora, most of them Southerners. Mississippi was ground zero 0:23:41.640 --> 0:23:44.440 of the Palagora epidemic, which is why a doctor named 0:23:44.520 --> 0:23:47.760 Joseph Goldberger headed there to study it in nineteen fourteen. 0:23:48.640 --> 0:23:52.120 Doctor Goldberger was a physician with the US Hygienic Laboratory, 0:23:52.480 --> 0:23:55.359 the progenitor of today's National Institutes of Health. 0:23:56.080 --> 0:24:02.440 So he did an experiment with prisoners the Rankin County Penitentiary. 0:24:03.080 --> 0:24:08.600 These were quote volunteers who were then fed a very 0:24:08.640 --> 0:24:14.200 specific diet, and they were able to understand that pelagra 0:24:14.760 --> 0:24:17.920 came from this niais and deficiency. 0:24:18.240 --> 0:24:21.520 See Mississippi's old Asylum. Might have begun life in the 0:24:21.560 --> 0:24:25.560 wealthiest state in the country, but by the nineteen twenties, 0:24:25.880 --> 0:24:30.840 Mississippi had assumed a position. We're all familiar with the country's. 0:24:30.359 --> 0:24:33.320 Poorest, because if you look at the old pictures of 0:24:33.400 --> 0:24:37.399 the you know of sharecroppers on the farms in the Delta, 0:24:37.880 --> 0:24:41.119 that cotton is planted right up to the shacks. Because 0:24:41.160 --> 0:24:44.200 they wanted to use every inch of land for cotton. Instead, 0:24:44.240 --> 0:24:49.080 they stopped growing their own vegetables and raising hogs or 0:24:49.160 --> 0:24:51.800 raising cattle or anything like that, and they bought everything 0:24:51.880 --> 0:24:55.680 from the company's store. I think it's like fat back 0:24:55.760 --> 0:24:56.680 and molasses. 0:24:57.680 --> 0:25:02.080 Southern doctors found Goldberger's evidence offensive. I mean, here is 0:25:02.119 --> 0:25:05.879 this Jewish doctor from New York City parachuting in just 0:25:05.920 --> 0:25:14.920 to embarrass a whole region by calling them poor. Goldberger 0:25:14.960 --> 0:25:17.720 had figured out that brewers yeast, the stuff you used 0:25:17.720 --> 0:25:21.840 to make beer, could send Pelagora packing, but his solution 0:25:21.920 --> 0:25:25.320 wouldn't be implemented at any scale until years later. During 0:25:25.359 --> 0:25:29.040 one of the greatest natural disasters in US history, the 0:25:29.160 --> 0:25:35.040 nineteen twenty seven Mississippi River floods, hundreds of thousands of 0:25:35.080 --> 0:25:36.320 people lost their homes. 0:25:36.800 --> 0:25:38.600 Tent cities sprung up along. 0:25:38.400 --> 0:25:41.960 Levees from Memphis all the way down to Louisiana, and 0:25:42.080 --> 0:25:45.840 off of Goldberger's advice, the Red Cross began adding brewers 0:25:45.920 --> 0:25:47.879 yas to its food rations. 0:25:47.840 --> 0:25:51.040 And that's why we have enriched foods. Now, that's what 0:25:51.080 --> 0:25:58.280 it means. The advent of enriched foods was from Polagora. 0:25:58.560 --> 0:26:02.680 This understanding of Pelagora progression complicates the narrative we're inclined 0:26:02.680 --> 0:26:04.920 to jump to when it comes to the Old Asylum. 0:26:05.359 --> 0:26:07.720 I know that a lot of the work that's been 0:26:07.720 --> 0:26:10.320 done on asylums in the South in general assumes that 0:26:10.440 --> 0:26:13.960 patients came to the asylums and were not fed well 0:26:14.000 --> 0:26:16.439 and got poleegra at the asylum and then ended up 0:26:16.520 --> 0:26:17.360 dying at polegra. 0:26:17.880 --> 0:26:19.360 I think the story is much. 0:26:19.200 --> 0:26:25.720 Different, counterintuitively, in terms of preventative medicine AKAA diet, the 0:26:25.760 --> 0:26:28.880