The treatment of patients in insane asylums was unimaginable during the late 1800s. Nurses and doctors treated patients like prisoners more than legitimately ill patients. This is clearly evident in 10 Days in the Mad-house by Nellie Bly. She is able to go undercover and reveal the asylums darkest secrets about the treatment of the patients. Which brings up the question: Do these doctors think their treatment is moral? During the 1800s different types of experiments were taking place in these asylums, and all of the treatments practiced were considered moral. They obviously were not due to the physical treatment of the patients, the gender divide and how men were treated differently than woman, and the living conditions.

During the 1800s as a whole insane asylums were on the come up, and the people deemed insane were seen as others and automatically admitted into these asylums against their own will and opinion. Doctors created treatments on how to heal the insane and it was considered highly effective, but there were secrets that stayed within these asylums that no one knew about or could prove. The patients were treated terribly, but it was all considered part of the master plan so everyone turned their head to it. The Pennsylvania Hospital was the first hospital to have a mentally insane ward. This was created in 1752, shortly after this hospital opened its doors to the mentally insane many more started to. Eventually the Women’s Lunatic Asylum opened on Blackwell’s Island. The treatment rumors started to spread, forcing people to finally get to the bottom of it. Moral treatment was a huge deal to the doctors and nurses. They created everything around it; the design of the ward and how they cured the insane was the biggest part of moral treatment. But after a while the treatment was found to be gruesome which questioned the moral aspect of the cure. Many asylums treated their patients with care and moral treatment, but the ones that did not needed to be investigated and they started to gain attention in 1887.

Insane asylums became a very popular thing during the 1800s, and there was a lot of controversy regarding the use and treatments as seen evident in the story 10 Days in the Madhouse. The patients in these asylums were treated terribly all day everyday. For example, when a nurse stated “ let her fall on the floor and it will teach her a lesson” (Bly 295). The nurses did not care about the well being of the patients they just treated them like prisoners more than patients and that is actually a question that arose in the late 1800s. A universal question about moral treatment was a topic of discussion for a lot of doctors back in the day and using this question to analyze 10 Days in the Mad-house brings out a large amount of historical evidence which ultimately makes the story and evidence that much more factual and effective. Carla Yanni of Rutgers University states, “ regular schedules were intended to make patients internalize self-control” (Yanni 27). The practices that took place in these asylums were all believed to cure the patients one way or the other, but no one is sure what the doctors deemed to be moral and what they deemed to be unmoral. That is what adds the historical context to 10 Days in the Madhouse. If these nurses and doctors considered all the practices to be moral Bly would have never went undercover to reveal the secrets with actual asylums during this time period. A question had to have arisen and or some sort of evidence had to be there. The backstory must be taken into consideration when thinking about the historical and cultural context that the story has to offer because without it some of the factual history will disappear.

 Most asylums across the United States had a well thought out plan of treatment for their patients, and one part of this was the actually asylum itself and how it was built. There was actually a basic design that many followed in the 1800s. These designers and doctors were so concerned on the actual lay out it effected the living conditions within the actual asylum. They tried to create these asylums to mirror living conditions back home, but this didn’t happen. This is evident when Bly states, “ The water was ice cold and I began to protest” (Bly 286). There is no point for an ice cold bath to be forced upon someone and they did nothing to make the patients feel like they were home, which was ultimately the main goal of these asylums. They were created to fix the mentally insane, but ended up housing them and going in circles regarding treatment because it was all ineffective. They treated them like prisoners and that is evident when Yanni says,  “This was a mere row of cells in the basement, and the hospital staff did not base their care on reformist principals” (Yanni 26). This does not help the patients at all, this does not sound like a hospital trying to fix to people it sounds like a jail that these people were put in because of something that is not their fault. They are being innocently punished and there is nothing they can do about it. This is not even the worst of it; this was just how living conditions affected the patients. Imagine, being treated terribly on top of living like an innocent prisoner. It would only make one even more insane and go in the complete opposite direction from what was trying to be accomplished. 

Another major problem with the treatment in these asylums was the gender divide and how females were treated compared to males. Many asylums were built for a certain gender, which is evident in Nellie Bly’s Ten Days in the Mad-House. On the other hand, many asylums treated both genders and as per usual “males and females were segregated, into mirrored halves of the asylum building” (Rutherford 63). The treatment differed for males and females especially in hospitals that just treated one gender. Even in hospitals that treated both the treatment was found to differ greatly. Women were often treated poorly behind the curtain of these asylums and it goes back to the idea of woman during the 1800s and how they were viewed. They were viewed as “second-class citizens. [Who] were expected to restrict their sphere of interest to the home and the family” (National Women’s History Museum 1). They were looked down upon and considered broken in these asylums. The mindset behind second-class citizens affected the care they received immensely. They did not deserve it in the eyes of the doctors; they wanted to focus more on the people who needed to be cured which was not women during this time period. Men on the other hand, were not treated greatly by any means but they were looked at differently.

Overall, the moral treatment in asylums differed greatly. Some offered moral treatment that was perfect for people suffering from insanity, but others did not and they went unnoticed for years until Nellie Bly decided to step up. These unmoral asylums treated women very poorly, along with the rest of the patients. The living conditions were very poor with many of the patients living in cells and areas that were not taken care of for the patient’s sake. The doctors in these asylums deemed the treatment moral, but did not notice how unmoral it got regarding the treatment as a whole. The patients were physically beaten and mentally beaten as the nurses and doctors treated them like scum. All of this is extremely unmoral, which answers the overall question regarding the doctors and nurses motives to treat their patients poorly.
