“Ten Days in a Mad-House” is a story of a girl that gets taken to an insane asylum for being supposedly insane. There she discovers the horrors of being in an insane asylum. She describes her ten days of horrific events that happen behind the closed doors of the institution. She discovers that being in an asylum is like being a prisoner. By looking at the effects of dehumanization in insane asylums in the late eighteenth and early-mid nineteenth century, we can understand that patients were treated like objects and not people. This is important because it effected the patients mental health and physical well being in the asylums.

It is important to understand what an asylum is and why women were put there.  Insane asylums in the late eighteenth and early-mid nineteenth century were places that family members or husbands brought women that were considered insane. Most women that were brought into asylums were not actually mentally insane, with the understanding that some did actually have poor mental health or a mental disease. In the nineteenth century, the definition of insane was not the same as it is today. Today, mental insane women have diagnosed diseases. Back then, they did not have the necessary information and medical study to understand what insanity was.  Women were considered insane if they defied there husbands, engaged in any sort of learning or reading, tried to be independent, had any sort of physical illness, were depressed, had anxiety, and/or showed any trait that was considered not normal or strange (Coleborne 107).  Families would either store there mentally insane relatives in the attic of there homes or at insane asylums. Asylums were often considered prisons. Instead of focusing on making a patient better, they were commonly considered a holding place for women; sometimes women were there for a life time.

There are many ways that the insane asylums dehumanized there patients. The first way was the lack of food that they offered there patients. The average person is supposed to get 2000 calories a day with at least one serving of each food group, protein, fruit, vegetable, grain, and dairy. It is very important to eat a healthy nutritious meals in order to maintain a healthy lifestyle and be physically well. In the insane asylums they gave their patients hardly this. As stated in Ten Days in a Mad-House, they gave their patients meals that were not anywhere close to the expectable amount of calories or nutrition.  For example, meal one consisted of a small bowl with five prunes, pinkish looking stuff that was supposed to be cup of tea, and sketchy buttered bread. Meal two served, fresh fish just boiled in water with no salt or pepper or butter with mutton and potatoes without the faintest seasoning. Meal three was dirty, black colored bread with a spider in it, oatmeal with molasses, and cold tea (Bly 285).  These meals were not only lacking nutritional value and proper calorie amount, but they were disgusting. Some patients could not stomach it and were forced to eat it by the nurse. Additionally, when you do not eat right your physical health is effected. Patients become a lot skinnier and even ill (Bly 287).  These institutions thought it would be a good idea to feed so called “sick” patients gross food to try and make them better. These gross meals were in contrast to the delicious meals that the workers and doctors were given with fresh fruit and meats (Bly 286).  This is extremely dehumanizing to the patients because they are being treated like they are objects, not people. They are being denied a right to eat and looked down on. They were all filled into a large room, were patients ran violently to their food in fear of not having enough, stealing others and were told to shut up if they asked for more or better food. Then, they were filled back into a locked room and had no control of where they could go. This is extremely inhuman and showed the lack of care towards the patients. 

In addition, patients were being dehumanized by having to strip their identity. Some institutions gave a patient a number (Monk 87).  This is so dehumanizing because they are taking away ones name that was given to one at birth. It makes them seem like an object and not a human being. They also strip there patients of their own clothes and force them to wear uniforms that are identical. This garment consisted of a “underskirt made of coarse dark cotton goods and a cheap white calico does with a black spot on it” (Bly 289).  This outfit was ugly and extremely cold. Imagine wearing that in the winter and how cold it would be. When patients asked for more clothing they were told no and said to shut up and stop asking. Nurses and Doctors did not care if patients were cold. This is another case were people were thought of as an object. Objects do not get cold, but people do. Lastly, patients lost their identity because they lost control of their free will. For example, they were not only forced to eat food, but they were forced to bathe in cold water. Nurses scrubbed them, rinsed them, and combed their hair like they are babies. If patients refused they would scrub harder. This shows that patients were thought of as stupid living creatures that cannot bathe themselves and are not sensitive to water temperature. When in reality, most women in the asylums were capable of bathing themselves and are extremely sensitive to cold water (Bly 287). The fact that they did not take the time or care to make sure there patients had warm water, shows that they do not care about there patients health at all.

Next, insane asylums dehumanized there patients by confining them. When you are checking into this asylum it is like being checked into a prison. Patients are basically treated like prisoners and objects. They are put into a room with a small bed and locked in there every night. During the day where ever they are, the doors are locked behind them, whether they are eating, bathing, or in holding. Holding is probably the most dehumanizing thing there is because they expect sick, tired patients to sit up on hard benches for hours upon hours of every day without any interactions, reading, or source to the outside world (Bly 284).  Being confined can make these patients even more insane then they actually are. Imagine if one had nothing to do all day and on top of that were cold, tired, had bad food, and were treated poorly. This is a big problem in the insane asylums. It is wrong to take in women that were not even insane to begin with and make them insane by the harsh treatment of the facility. Confining patients shows dehumanization because they do not care about the well being or comfort of a patient (Monk 92). They think they need to lock patients up, preventing them from escaping, but they are not realizing the effects of  confinement. Confinement can cause patients to get even crazier, most people do not respond well to it. Additionally, confinement can cause physical health effects. Like heart pain, headache, and disabling the ability to see well (Monk 95).

Finally,  insane asylums dehumanized there patients by torturing them. There are many forms of torture in insane asylums. When patients are not doing what they are told, nurses beat them, choke them, or put them in a straight jacket (Coleborne 109). This is dehumanization because they are treating patients like an animal. When a horse does not run fast enough you whip it, when a patient does not listen you do not choke it. This again shows that nurses did not care about patients feelings or well being. Physically hurting someone is going to make them more upset and cause them to disobey more. Physically hurting someone is also obviously going to cause physical damage to the body such as bruise, concussion, bleeding, ect.

In conclusion, the way patients were treated was awful and dehumanized in the asylums. Luckily, today insane asylums are a lot different. They feed there patients right, treat there patients with more respect, and have better conditions. Today, they also have the correct medical information and help. They have professional psychologists to help patients. They also have doctors and nurses and that are trained to work with patients with a mental disease. Additionally, the people being checked into a mental institution is a lot different today then it was back then. This is important because we are no longer checking women into an asylum that do not need to be. It is also important that we do not confine patients in asylums like they did back then. Today there are laws that have been created stating that patients are not allowed to be solitary confine for a long period of time because it causes negative health effects mentally and physically. Overall, it is important to understand and remember insane asylums in the nineteenth century, so we do not dehumanize women again in the future.

