The book Ten Days in a Mad-House by Nellie Bly was, and still is, an extremely important work of literature.  To truly understand and appreciate this text, the reader must first do some research on the life of Elizabeth Cochran Seaman, who used Nellie Bly as a pen name.  Bly was born in 1864 in a small suburb near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  This was a very fitting time period for her to be born into, since she strongly advocated women’s rights in a time period that was dominated by men.  In fact, she was offered her first writing position after sending in a strong rebuttal to a sexist newspaper column.  Nellie Bly then wrote for a local newspaper and became a foreign correspondent in Mexico after writing about factory conditions.  She then moved around for a little bit before ending up in New York City in 1887.  There she began to work for the New York World, and was given the job offer to go undercover in an insane asylum.  The insane asylum that she spent ten days in was The Women’s Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell’s Island, which appropriately matched her strong feelings about the way women and the insane were treated in this time period.  By looking at the significant historical connections that this story has, the reader can truly appreciate its impact on literature and on the world. 

The first form of neglect that Ms. Bly experienced was the doctor’s examination.  The doctor basically ignored anything Nellie had to say, and he most likely did not give much attention to the other patients either.  She even says on pg. 284 in The Carolina Reader that the doctor, “asked her six questions to every one of me”.  This is referring to the doctor giving more attention to flirting with the nurse than to actually hearing what Ms. Bly has to say.  Even when Nellie says that she is not sick and they cannot keep her locked in the asylum, the doctor completely ignores her.  This is the type of unjust, yet historically common treatment many patients received when their fate was being decided.

One of the worst aspects of the asylum was the food, which was so atrocious that it was torturous for the patients to eat.  Ms. Bly describes the entire first dinner in extreme detail to get her point across.  First the women were forced to stand in line in a freezing corridor for a long amount of time.  Then once the women were let inside the dining room, they sat at a long, ugly table without a tablecloth.  Every woman ate as much as they could force down, and some even stole food from the other patients.  Ms. Bly, however, describes the food as practically inedible, and hardly ate at all.  Meals like these were considered normal in the asylum, and the patients had to suffer through them every day.

On top of the examination and food, there were other forms of neglect and abuse at the asylum.  Ms. Bly describes the freezing cold sleeping quarters, the uncomfortable beds, the noisy night nurse, and possibly worst of all, the beatings.  All of these terrible conditions and actions were acceptable in this time period because the nurses had no supervisors.  The doctors would simply examine the patients before turning them over to the corrupt nurses.  Even after pleading with the nurses for a nightgown, or begging for the beatings to stop, the patients’ requests were ignored.  Nellie Bly found out firsthand that nurses were allowed to do whatever they wanted to the patients, and she wanted that to change.   

Before Nellie Bly, the treatment in The Women’s Lunatic Asylum was basically subhuman.  She even experienced some of this torture herself.  There were several methods of “treating” the insane in the 1800’s that now seem completely cruel and unusual.  In the excerpt of this story in The Carolina Reader, one can see a small portion of the terrible treatment Ms. Bly received along with the other patients.  The first form of treatment that is shown in this book is hydrotherapy.  Nellie Bly explains the ice-cold bath on pgs. 286 and 287 saying, “I got…three buckets of water over my head--ice-cold water, too…”.  Cold baths like these were actually considered to help the insane patients by stimulating their bodies.  Another possible reason for the cold baths, besides the supposed benefits, is that the nurses simply did not care about the comfort of the patients.

Besides these so-called helpful baths, there were not many other forms of treatment mentioned in this passage of the book.  The other two that are mentioned though are solitary confinement and taking walks.  For whatever reason, people thought that having the mental patients spending hours doing nothing would help cure them.  Besides the forced activities, Nellie Bly spent a lot of her time simply sitting alone in her room.  Some activities that broke up the monotony of sitting around were the forced walks.  Nellie Bly describes some of the women as being chained up and restricted on their walk, which is extremely ironic.  The walks were meant to be helpful for the patients, but seemed more like a reminder of their hopelessness of ever leaving the terrible asylum.

The main reason why all of these horrific conditions are important is because they were legal and socially acceptable at the time.  There were practically no regulations on how the workers at asylums treated the insane, so the patients were forced to live in unimaginable ways.  This story caused large-scale modifications to these institutions, and this is why it has had such a huge historical impact.

Nellie Bly wanted bring about change to this terrible asylum by publishing her story, and that is exactly what happened.  In the final chapter of her book, chapter seventeen, she tells the readers about going to a grand jury with her story, and the investigation that followed.  In the beginning of this chapter, Ms. Bly says that she was summoned to tell her story before a grand jury after leaving the asylum.  She then accompanied the jurors on a trip to the island so that they could see the conditions for themselves.  Unfortunately, though, the doctors and nurses heard that the jurors were coming so they cleaned the place and tried to make it look like a normal establishment.  When the nurses were questioned, they confessed that they knew that the jurors were coming, but they still tried to hide most of what they knew about the conditions at the asylum.  Then the main doctor, Dr. Dent, was questioned.  When asked about the baths, the book says, “Dr. Dent confessed that he had no means by which to tell positively if the bath was cold…”, and regarding the nurses’ treatment of the patients it says, “If nurses were cruel to their patients, had he any positive means of ascertaining it?  No, he had not.”.  When asked about the terrible food, Dr. Dent said it was because of “the lack of funds”.  He also said that not all the doctors were competent in the field, which led to problems.  In this section of the chapter, the reader can see the curtain being pulled back, and the truth of the asylum flowing out.

Throughout this story, and especially in the final chapter, it seems that the nurses were the ones to blame, and not the doctors.  Dr. Dent actually says in this chapter that he is glad that Ms. Bly did what she did, because he did not realize how bad some of the conditions were at the asylum.  The doctor was kept in the dark most of the time because the nurses always had somebody on lookout to warn of an approaching doctor.  Even though the nurses seemed to be terrible people, Miss Anne Neville, one of Ms. Bly’s friends from the asylum, says that the nurses improved after Ms. Bly left.  The kitchen was cleaned, the food improved, and the bedrooms were given upgrades as well.                                                                                                                                    Several sources say that the investigation of this insane asylum was prompted solely because of Nellie Bly’s work, which was her goal all along.  After the jurors saw the asylum, they approved larger amounts of funds for the establishment, and several other changes including the appointment of supervisors to overlook the nurses.  In late December of the same year, the jury approved a fifty-seven percent raise of the funding for the institution.  This was a huge increase in money for the asylum, allowing them to fix the problems that they claimed were caused by a lack of funds.  After increasing the funding of the insane asylum, the jury also increased funding of jails, hospitals, and workhouses.  In conclusion, this is what Nellie Bly dreamed of happening.  She saw that cultural stigmas of women and the mentally ill led to atrocious conditions, like the ones in Blackwell’s Island.  Nellie Bly changed insane asylums for the better through her daring journey, and ultimately had a profound impact on these establishments.  This is the overwhelming cultural and historical connection that the reader can see, and by studying these associations the reader can see how much one person on a mission was able to accomplish.

 