Inspiration for writing a piece of literature does not come from the author’s mind alone. Throughout experiences, history and stories heard in one’s life, the mind begins to create different variations of these memories and stories. This is why it is so easy for earlier pieces of work to become inspiration for later pieces of literature. In Nellie Bly’s Ten Days in a Mad House, the actions toward and treatment of patients in nineteenth century insane asylums could have definitely played a role in persuading the author to really find out what was going on in these situations, causing her to write this piece. Foerschner’s History of Mental Illness: From Skull Drills to Happy Pills and Hunsicker’s Discovering Hidden South Carolina: One Wednesday at a Time show how history, stories and personal experiences all contribute to inspire authors in their writing.

Asylums during the eighteen-hundreds did not exactly have the best reputation. From the living conditions, to the food the patients were provided, treatments for their “diseases” and more, it became fairly evident that the staff of these mental institutions as well as the people who ran them did not care for the wellbeing of the patients who inhabited these asylums. These poor people were sent to these places to receive help, but instead were severely mistreated. Some treatments for their illnesses included electrical shock therapy (which was unpredictable, unreliable and painful) and insulin shock therapy, in which large amounts of insulin were injected into the patient to induce coma. In Bly’s Ten Days in a Mad House, the author mentions how these cruel treatments were a problem and talks about the ice baths and the frigid rooms that the asylums provided for these patients. In the end, these early institutions proved to be unsuccessful in taking care of, treating and curing their patients (Foerschner 3). 

Once a patient was admitted to an asylum in the nineteenth century, most likely they would never see the outside world again. As Hunsicker mentioned in Discovering Hidden South Carolina: One Wednesday at a Time, institutions such as the Bull Street Lunatic Asylum in Columbia, South Carolina were equipped with everything anyone could ever need, maybe even known as “A city within a city” (Hunsicker 2). The grounds of this particular asylum housed a library, a church, grew its own food, even had a mattress factory and more. The asylums themselves became a new way of life once the patient was admitted, as this would more than likely be the only thing they would know for the rest of their life. They made these institutions in a way to where no one would have to leave them, which is probably why almost everyone who stepped into these buildings would eventually end up dying in them as well. 

An abundance of tales and movies come from the haunting experiences of insane asylums. The inspiration for Bly’s 10 Days in a Mad House more than likely came from stories she had heard about these mental hospitals. She went in to see the cruel treatments, the bad conditions. She witnessed the horrid food that was inedible, such as the bread and butter she was told not to eat, and the evil nurses and doctors who forced the patients to clean the asylums and treated them so harshly. These places were prisons. They were supposed to be a place of safety for the so called “mentally insane” but instead anyone who was a patient there were anything but protected. The pieces above by Foerschner and Hunsicker show the history and how that can affect other pieces of literature as well as stories in inspiring people to write what everyone is truly interested in. 

The history and dark stories of insane asylums have been the inspiration of many books, stories, movies and even this instance of a reporter playing the part of a patient to figure out what really went on inside of them. This ultimately led to the improvement of the institutions throughout America when the truth came out about what was happening. The horror that went on inside of these buildings have ever since been documented and have yet to have people lose any interest in them. Not only were they places that performed harsh and cruel procedures in order to “fix” patients, they acted as prisons for the body and the mind of anyone admitted. 
