The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1883-05-12
The CITY OF THE INSANE.
Thousand People in the Care of
the Indiana Hospital.
An Interesting Visit to the Institution, and
What Is Learned of Its Condition.
Intelligent and Faithful Work.


Written for the indianapolis Journal.
A not unpleasant street-car ride of two
miles west from indianapolis, on the National
road, brings you into the beautiful grounds
of the Indiana Hospital Tor the Insane. In
front of these immense piles of brick are
sixty acres of park, well shaded by the natu-
raj forest. Pleasant walks, set with choice
trees and shrubs, a conservatory of rare
plants, the air sweet with odors and the music
OF birds, do not suggest the sorrow and mis-
cry all these surroundings are intended to
and do alleviate.
Here is a community of over 1000 per-
sons, enjoying, as their mental
and physical state will permit, the
bounty and charity of the State.
They have for their use and comfort real
estate worth one and a half millions; for
their maintenance nearly $50, 900 is annually
appropriated. They have a park Of eighty
acres for their rambles, a vegetable garden of
forty acres which yields them annually
$4,000 worth of fruits in their season. while
TO the left is a pasture of forty acres, with as
many cows to furnish them with milk and
cream. They have a half dozen skilled physi-
clans to care for their health, an army of
servants to look after their hourly wants.
For their subsistence 100000 is paid annu-
ally; they use 100 barrels best hour each
month and $4,000 pounds best beef, besides
1000 pounds of butter each month, as many
bushels of vegetables, and daily eighty gal
Ions of milk. For their diversion
there is a theater, where they dance
or witness plays; they have
a half dozen pianos and as many organs. If
able and choosing to work, the men are en-
ployed in the garden or about the grounds.
They, enjoy it and hail the spring. The wo-
men have light employment, suited to their
tastes and ability, in their rooms. Many of
them assist in the sewing-rooms, where S12,-
600 worth of clothing is made annually.
Labor, occupation, often proves their best
restorative.
DIVISION n MANAGEMENT.
In the building to the south, the mems
department. are 45O inmates; to the north is
the wonien's department with 625. When
one sees these vast piles of masonry and re-
members their benevolent design, he is re-
minded of the good will to men, that near
ly two thousand years ago fell soft as the
dew OF heaven on suffering hui
mainly. Within these walls are those
once our friends and ~neighbors, but now be-
come the closeted skeletons of the house
hold. We put them aside, but we cannot
ignore them. Like the poor, they are always
with US. Nay, insanity may come even to
us, and we shrink like Lear, exclaiming:
20, let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heay-
enl''
INSIDE THE HOSPITAL.
room is a copy in oil OF the justly celebrated
picture of DR.. Philip Pinel ordering off the
chains and shackels of the insane at La
Salpetriere Q795l, and thus inaugurating the
present system of kind and gentle treatment.
We pass with Superintendent Rogers through
the central official building, and enter the
wards, of which there are forty-two, each
containing from twenty-five to thirty in
mates, with three or four attendants.
The patients are carefully examined and
those of like Affections classed together.
There is no broadly-drawn line between the
sane and the insane. Most persons have had
moments of madness, if not of Gelusion. Ec-
centricity and natural idiosyncracy pass by
insensible graduation into acute mania and
imbecility. The hospital includes all sorts
and conditions of men. There are the usual
ly harmless cranks stranded on perpetual
motion, or squaring the circle; and so on
through the various shade of insane diathe-
sis. There is frenzied inebriety, ~ecstatic de-
votion and mild melancholy; there are those
Wnom IL pleaseu Uou 10 FORM OF ldlot
mind"
Here is a ward of nice ole ladies, always
quiet and orderly; here again, of young wo-
men reading magazines or doing on the
%settees, while one of their number
is rafting a merry sonata on the piano.
Through a tire-proof corridor, with slate
floor and stairs, we pass to the next section
of four wards. These sections are as distinct
as the blocks of the Wanted cottage sys-
tenn" They corner on each other, three or
four wards each, retreating from the central
official building. Each ward Is essentially a
cottage; so that we have the advantages of
the cottage plan with none of it's %inconve-
~niencies. If a patient sickens in the winter
night, the doctor passes through the warm
corridors and is present in a moment; no
stopping for coats and mittens; no cold meals
frozen in transit; no lnconvenient transfers
of patients through storm or sleet to other
quarters. The building is nearly fire proof.
A six-inch main girdles the buildings; there
are 1000 feet of woven hose, two outside
reels, wells with capacity of 800, 900 gallons,
seventy inside stations, each with one hun
bred feet of hose, and a well-drilled fire
brigade. DR.. Rogers says that in four
minutes he can have a stream
of water on the cupola, and by signal can in
ten minutes have every patient out of the
house. The wells furnish water of 100 OF
hardness and entirely free from organic mat
ter. By the use of tannate of soda, DIR. Rog-
ers, who is skilled in chemistry and tech
nology, and an excellent mechanic, has kept
the boilers perfectly free of deposits, even
after three years use.
The present system of steam pumps set
twenty feet below grade Securing short lift
and close connectionl, with well tubes rising
ten feet above pumps as vacuum chambers,
and the whole system connected by automatic
electrical apparatus with the engineer on
duty fifty yards distant in the boiler-rooms,
was devised and arranged by the superin-
tendent.
The wards are steam-heated and gas-light-
ed, ventilated efficiently by air drawn from
under the caves and passing down fues to
the basement, thus avoiding the ground air.