
Up until the early 1900s, mental illnesses were considered as a negative connotation. Many patients were treated degradingly even for their mental illnesses because they were viewed as monsters to society. In the mid-1800s, when Ten Days in a Mad House was written, mental illnesses were frowned upon. The main character Nellie Bly, who is an undercover journalist, goes into a mad house for 10 days to uncover the truth of what goes on behind its closed doors in order to uncover the truth that madhouses did not treat their patients right. However, today mental illnesses are accepted in society and are treated with therapy and many different types of medicine.

In the article, “Mental Illness: From Skull Drills to Happy,” by Allison Foershner, explains about how people were placed in insane asylums from the 1500’s to the mid-1800s. People believed that to get rid of a mental illness people must regularly attend church and take a pilgrimage. If they did not receive God’s mercy, they would be sent to a mad house. In 1406 CE, the first “Mad House” in Spain opened. Because there were so many people inside the institutions, they had terrible living conditions and patients would receive cruel abuse. The Mad house would be staffed with untrained, unqualified individuals who treated the patients as animals. There were no visitors allowed to the cells except food deliveries and the rooms were never cleaned. Patients would sleep on unsanitized straw on the floor and to “cure” the patients, they would be submerged into hot or ice-cold water to shock their minds from the normal state. They also used leeches, hoping they would suck the bad blood out of patients. In a different house in Paris in 1792, some patients were cured. They took the opposite approach by being kind and taking the patients’ needs into considerations. In Lagos and Abeokuta, conditions were less pleasant than Paris. The cells were “dark, overcrowded, lacked supplies, poor bathing facilities, and they would chain the patients to restrain them” (Foershner 1). Patients receive very little occupational therapy while at the institution. Many institutions did not test their patients to see what made them crazy. No person had a specific kind of treatment to help then so everyone was tortured the same way.

It is upsetting to see how patients were treated unfairly in the past. The doctors and nurses back then didn’t have the regulations or knowledge on how to medically treat people. The article did have the same unsanitary conditions as the story. For example, Bly was forced into an ice cold bath in a public bathroom with a yellow rag. In this instance, all the patients are treated unfairly like animals. She represents all patients that are being disregarded and handled like trash. They shouldn’t be treated this way because they are humans who actually have mental problems. Even in worse conditions, the nurses treated them badly because possibly they weren’t given the credit or recognition. The nurses were obviously rude to the patients as seen in an example in the story when Nellie sees the nurse treat an old German lady, “seemed to find a great deal of amusement in teasing the harmless old soul” (Bly 297). In the quote, the nurses had fun making derogatory comments or acts towards the patient. No wonder Nellie had to act as a patient in order to uncover the truth unless she was a part of the scene. The author had the courage to sacrifice herself to publicize what was going on so that the institution could be shut down. 

In another article called “1774 Madhouse Act”, the author, Sheilagh Holmes, talks about what the act for regulating Madhouses in 1774. The article mentioned many people would admit their perfectly sane family members or close friends to the asylum for their own financial benefit. One of the treatments in the institutions include heavily medicating the patients in order to ‘get the job done for the day.’ In contrast to people being treated to therapy today, people were treated through therapy but back in the 1800s with “asylums [that] were merely reformed penal institutions where the mentally ill were abandoned by relatives or sentenced by the law and faced a life of inhumane treatment, all for the sake of lifting the burden off ashamed families and preventing any possible disturbance in the community” (Holmes 2). Until 1774 when the Madhouse act was passed, there was no law stating what mad houses could do. The Act didn’t specifically mention what changes the building could do. The regulation didn’t require for nurses to obtain a doctor’s license or to have a obtain a professional degree. However, the Madhouse Act did improve regulations such as visitations and inspections. “Consequently, numerous private madhouses became subject to public scandals, accused of horrific abuses, malpractices, and patient mistreatment” (Holmes 1). Although this act was passed, many insane asylums continued to not treat their patients right and remained bad conditions. 

Both articles relate to the actions that were done in Ten Days in a Mad House. The articles talked about the living conditions in many different mad houses between 1500s and 1800s. Many conditions related to the story such as the uncomfortable living and the poor bathing facilities. Nellie experienced many horrible interactions with the nurses. Interactions such as being forced getting washed by a discolored cloth that they used also on all the patients. Nelly also witnessed how a new patient was treated, “This made the poor creature cry the more, and so they choked her” (Bly 297). The author calls her a poor creature while unable to do anything to stop them. The nurses wanted to her stop crying so in order to do that, they only had one idea, to choke her. They acted as if they were bullies and they obviously didn’t care about the patient’s mental state. The poor creature maybe suffered enough being placed in the crazy asylum so abusing her is just going to make her mind worse. Many attacks like this wasn’t the only one. They also made Bly sleep in an uncomfortable outfit with wet hair in the freezing room. The article talks about the horrible conditions in the mad houses relating and how they were not safe. This relates to Nellie Bly’s point when she goes to talk to the doctor about how it in unsafe to lock the patients in at night because in a case of a fire they would not be able to get out. The point of the analysis is to prove how badly treated the patients in these institutions were. The patient’s mental state obviously worsened because of the terrible treatment. People were placed in these houses for random reasons like not believing in god or not looking “normal”. As time progressed, mental illnesses have known as something that can be cured through medicine and therapy. In contrast, during the 1800s, mentally challenged people were a threat and had to be isolated from other to not damage anyone else. Nowadays, people are receiving the right treatment for their mental illnesses.

Fortunately, patients are receiving the right treatment. Nurses now have a favorable quality and cares for the patients. Today, patients are treated with respect and the care they deserve. As time went on, mental illnesses have been accepted and treated with things such as medication and therapy. In the past, mad houses were used as a place to take people with mental illnesses or people who didn’t fit in society in the 1900s. Patients were abused and forced to do things against their own will. It is apparent to see why visitors weren’t allowed to visit the institution in the first place. The work, Ten Days in a Mad House, uncovered the truth about what happens in a mad house when a journalist Nellie Bly decided to voluntarily go in one undercover. Bly uncovered the secret of how many lost souls were in that place because they didn’t deserve to be treated that way. 
