She is very noisy at times.”23
We learn from the Ross County certificate of insanity that Female Patient 6 was age fifty-nine and “she has been insane for over five years—was in Asylum at Columbus two years and the last time in the infirmary. Cause: unhappy family relations with her husband.” After she was admitted to the asylum at Athens, one case note was entered for her, on February 2, 1874: “Failing sight and deficient hearing. [She] has not improved since her admission into the Asylum. She is very excitable at times.”
Difficulty following childbirth—exhaustion, depression, illness, lack of proper care—brought many women to the asylum. Ill with mastitis and depressed following the birth of her third child, the wife of a Civil War veteran was hospitalized in 1874 by her doctor and her husband, becoming Female Patient 36.24 Her doctor wrote,
Duration of her illness is about six months, the exciting cause of which is probably childbirth or the puerperal state.25 [She] has attempted violence upon herself. She has taken remedies to quiet her nervous system, such as Chloral Bromides and Morphine, but not regularly nor in large enough doses to have much effect. . . . About three months after confinement and while suffering with repeated mammary abscesses & much pain & loss of sleep she first began to exhibit symptoms of Insanity[.] [S]he has been very melancholy—has several times attempted suicide & says she is fearful she may kill her child. Does not eat or sleep enough[;] requires constant watching.
The casebook noted that she had been brought by her husband to the asylum suffering from an abscess of both breasts and talking of suicide by hanging, poison, or drowning. She recovered and returned home, and a few years later she visited Boston and wrote a memoir of her visit there to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s garden, where he presented her with a rose. The son whose birth precipitated her illness went on to work for the Internal Revenue Service and lived to the age of eighty-one.
Another mother and her child did not fare so well. A probate judge in Zanesville, Ohio, added this note to the asylum superintendent to the standard commitment form for Female Patient 62, emphasizing the desperate situation of his charge, an unmarried woman who had killed her child:
March 3, 1874
Dr. R. Gundry:
Athens, O.
Dear Sir:
In the case of ______, I copy the following from the Medical Certificate. The exciting cause of her Insanity “is trouble growing out of a bastard child. She murdered her child with an ax and does not attempt to conceal it. She has been worse during her menstrual period. She imagines spirits present and talking with her.”
Any information that I can give you regarding any of the patients sent from here will be cheerfully given.
Very Respectfully
L. R. Landfear
Probate Judge
Commitment for insanity in circumstances of unwed motherhood was not unheard of. Female Patient 192, a twenty-eight-year-old woman from Zanesville, Ohio, was hospitalized ostensibly for guilt over having disgraced her family in this manner. Explained the medical witness,
The exciting cause of disease: compunction for having disgraced herself and family. Has not attempted violence. Her mind was devoted as much as possible by all who knew her. Chloral & bromide & Potassia were given to procure sleep, other remidees we used as tonics etc. . . . I would say there are other circumstances which would have tendency to throw further light upon the subject. Last Spring she had an Illegitimate child, and from that time never left the house. During Aug. and Sept. she nursed a Sister who had Typhoid Fever and during that time the first symptoms of Insanity were detected.
Women were also declared insane because of the strain of bearing many children. A twenty-six-year-old mother from the Columbus area was sent to the Athens asylum because of “over-anxiety about her children. The primary cause is over-child bearing, having had five children in six years.” Her doctor suggested that she might be soon cured at the asylum and could perhaps “make a rappid recovery if she can have proper care, treatment and rest.”26
In Victorian America, sexually transmitted disease, especially syphilis, was of medical, moral, and social concern. In part because of the association of the disease with prostitution, women were thought to be responsible for spreading the disease and were urged to keep themselves clean. A medical treatise on the treatment of syphilis from 1842 notes, “If, in general, women were more cleanly and careful of themselves, the venereal disease would be far less common.”27 Both women and men were encouraged by their physicians not to marry if they had syphilis, to prevent spreading the disease.
Female Patient 277, a new bride twenty years of age, had contracted syphilis while visiting Wheeling, West Virginia, when she was nineteen.28 She visited a doctor in Mount Vernon, Ohio, and he treated her, though he urged her not to follow through with plans to marry. Despite this advice, marry she did. Following the wedding, she and her husband visited another physician regarded as a “quack” by her Mount Vernon physician. The “quack,” without examining her, told her she was pregnant and infected with syphilis and sent her back to her father’s home. Here unfolded a drama involving suicide attempts, which led to her commitment to the asylum at Athens on June 5, 1874.29 Her Mount Vernon physician prepared her commitment papers with no mention of syphilis, saving that for a private letter to the asylum superintendent.
Statement of Medical Witness to the Probate Court:
I hereby certify that I have examined Mrs. ______, State of Ohio and find her insane. I believe her now to be free from any infectious disease or vermin.
She is twenty years of age. On Wednesday May 28th 1874 I was called upon to see the aforesaid lady found her at the Commercial House in Mt. Vernon, Ohio in bed[.] [H]er voice was husky, pupils contracted, she acknowledged to having taken morphine with a view of destroying her life[:] under a threat from me that her trunk should be examined she gave me a bottle containing 10 1/2 grains of Sulphate of Morphine. Strong Coffee was ordered and a close watch kept. On Thursday evening following upon hearing her Father’s voice, she shot herself in the thorax, the ball entered at the middle and near the left side of the Sternum, and passed in an outward direction and now lies in the soft parts covering the left side of the Thorax. None of the parties were ever in an Asylum. Mrs. ______ has never had Epilepsy. This person has made two attempts to take her life, and of which I have knowledge. The treatment has been good nutritious diet and a sedative. She now says that she does not want to recover, has attempted to probe the wound with her fingers.
Her physician attached a letter describing the year-long unfolding of the situation, which included the diagnosis of syphilis and follow-up treatment by the “quack,” details that he wished to spare the patient’s parents. His notes, down to the blue silk dress purchased by the bride, give an unusually vivid picture of the difficulties of this young woman.
June 1st, 1874
To the Superintendent of the Lunatic Asylum at Athens, Ohio
Dear doctor,
I take this opportunity to give you some more information in regard to ______ than I felt called upon to make in the Certificate. I write you expecting that what I now reveal will be kept a secret for the sake of the father and mother of this unfortunate woman. She first consulted me for a private disease about the middle of last January. Said she contracted it 2 months prior in Wheeling Va. I made an examination and found a chancre and multiple bubers in both groins. I regarded the case one of true Syphilis and so treated it. In a few weeks she had sore throat & an eruption. Under the use
