In Bly’s “10 Days In The Madhouse” she goes into an asylum and tries to expose the misconduct that happens in these asylums. She blamed the asylums for all the problems which ranged from poor clothing to staff misconduct, but it wasn’t entirely the asylums fault. There were many factors why these asylums were failing. In my paper, I will show that the major problems leading to mistreatment were outside of the asylum that ranged from social and intellectual issues. 

Her main issue was that the physicians and workers were mistreated patients. In chapter 13 she complained about the beating of the patients, and in chapter 8 she pointed out the physician’s lack of knowledge when diagnosing the patients. She makes this out to be the asylums fault, but the problem that caused this behavior comes from other sources. The physicians and workers were not the best because they were the cheapest ones they could find. The poor funding of the asylums called for them to cut corners only hiring the cheapest physicians and after that the workers had to be the cheapest they could find which only left criminals (Whitaker 35-37). With the low wages, they were not able to hire the type of people who would treat the patients with respect and so this is where the abuse problem stemmed from.

Bly’s second point is that the Physicians didn’t have the proper knowledge to diagnose and treat the patients the right way. In chapter 12 she complains about the treatment the physicians were using. For the odd treatment methods, these methods were what physicians believed to work. The physicians that the asylums could hire were older and hadn’t kept up with modern medicine (Whitaker 37). The knowledge of the human body was lacking at the time, along with the lack of knowledge of most physicians about the female body, and the even more lack of knowledge of the human brain and mental illness led to these odd experimental methods of treatment. The lack of knowledge also stemmed from an ignorance of male doctors at the time that treated women and men very differently in similar situations (Wood 1973). The male physicians saw themselves as much smarter than women and once the physicians made up their mind they wouldn’t take any advice. 

In another one of her points Bly complains about the poor living conditions of the asylum in chapter 10 and 11 she points out the cold buildings and the cold baths, she also points out the bad food and other living conditions. These problems arose because of the lack of funding to the asylums combined with overcrowding in the asylums (Whitaker 35). This problem made it difficult to afford to heat such a large building and heat a large amount of water for the patients. The food was bad because of poor funding, but I also feel she complained a little too much as she complained a lot about seasoning which is an expensive commodity. Bly also talks about the poor items such as clothes blankets and furniture the lack of clothes and sufficient blankets were another cause of the lack of funding. That along with the influx of patients into the asylums at this time caused the asylums to make tough choices. And as for the furniture she complains about the benches used throughout the facility but these benches are used because there is a large number of inmates and individual chairs just wouldn’t have worked.

She often complained that the Physicians in the asylum often didn’t listen to the patients and took the nurses side in situations. In chapter 13 she talked about how the physicians ignored here when she came to them about the beating. This I saw it was very reasonable because though she said they ignored it, but the truth is they probably looked into it, because they looked into almost every demand she came to them with. For example, she came to them with the complaint of it being too cold, and the clothes not being sufficient and in both instances the physician helped her to the best of his abilities. In the case of the beatings, you have to remember she is supposedly insane and so it’s the word of an insane person versus a staff of the asylum in a time when the mentally ill were not very respected. In many chapters Bly asked for improvements to the asylum, and when they were not granted then she complained. This is very unfair because as I have said many times the asylums were underfunded and it’s not like the physician can just make money appear and some of the things she asked for were very expensive improvements to make such as new lock mechanism for all the doors or better food or clothing.

Bly makes many good points as to what the asylums need to do to improve themselves but she makes it seem as though the asylums are fully in control of these factors and they could just change. But in the case of most of the public asylums at this time the conditions there were the best that could happen under the conditions that society put them in. Almost all problems faced in the asylum are because of a lack of funding which causes a trickle effect that made every other part of the asylum have problems, and though she exposed these asylums for the mistreatment. The asylums would not have been able to do anything unless the government allows more funding. But due to common beliefs at the time, not many people cared about the mentally ill and that coupled with the fact that views on women were also not the best lead to these problems. If Bly wanted change she needed to have pointed out the problems in society. She needed to show that if society wanted the asylums to be nice society needed to change its views.
