Document 13

 

Read article linked below:
Bedlam 1946

• The author of this article points out that Pennsylvania's Byberry Hospital's nickname is the "dungeon" and that across the nation states mental hospitals are in a state similar to concentration camps. After reading the article draw parallels between the mental institutions and dungeons and concentration camps and list them.
• The article lists incidents of extreme beatings by attendants on patients, and even cases of murder. Does it surprise you that an attendant charged with the murder of a patient was only sentenced to five years? What factors would lead a judge to give this sentence in this case? Do you think that the same sentence could be handed down today?
• The article discusses instances of patients being restrained by sheet restraints for days at a time, often without being toileted. List the mental and physical consequences this could have on the patient.

""The inadequacy of the patients' food is often aggravated by the assignment of the finest food to the hospital staffs. The dinner menu for the doctors at a Pennsylvania state hospital on a Tuesday in August 1945 consisted of a "prime rib roast beef with gravy, broiled potatoes, roast corn on the cob, bread (white, whole wheat, rye or raisin) with butter, salad of cucumber, lettuce and celery, apple-apricot pie and coffee, tea, iced coffee, iced tea, or milk." On the same day patients in several buildings got "hard boiled eggs, lima beans, beets, white bread without butter and milk or black coffee.""

• What are your reactions to the discrepancies between the dinner menu for the doctors of the hospital and the patients. Do you believe that it is ok to feed the patients differently than the doctors? What about in a prison setting? Should prisoners be fed differently than the guards? What are the parallels between the patients and prisoners in this article?

"A patient became ill and his rectal temperature was fond to be 105.4. The doctor who was called replied "He gets a high temperature every once in a while, so don't worry about it.'"

• What do you think a doctor at an emergency room would do if a patient came in with this temperature? In what ways is the doctor breaking the Hippocratic Oath?