Reasons for admission

  • November 13, 2024

From 1864 to 1889, there was a list with reasons to be admitted to a lunatic asylum. Today, we cannot even imagine being admitted into an asylum because of Asthma, laziness or grief. And what about Bad whisky?! What on earth did they mean by that? Just scroll through the list and see if you’re safe. Or not! 

  • Intemperance & business trouble
  • Kicked in the head by a horse
  • Hereditary predisposition
  • Ill treatment by husband
  • Imaginary female trouble
  • Hysteria
  • Immoral life
  • Jealousy and religion
  • Laziness
  • Marriage of son
  • Masturbation & Syphilis
  • Masturbation for 30 years
  • Medicine to prevent conception
  • Menstrual deranged
  • Mental excitement
  • Novel reading
  • Nymphomania
  • Opium habit
  • Over action of the mind
  • Over study of religion
  • Over taxing mental powers
  • Parents were cousins
  • Periodical fits
  • Tobacco & masturbation
  • Political excitement
  • Politics
  • Religious enthusiasm
  • Fever and loss of lawsuit
  • Fits and desertion of husband
  • Asthma
  • Bad company
  • Bad habits & political excitement
  • Bad whiskey
  • Bloody flux
  • Brain fever
  • Business nerves
  • Carbonic acid gas
  • Congestion of brain
  • Death of sons in war
  • Decoyed into army
  • Deranged masturbation
  • Desertion by husband
  • Dissolute habits
  • Domestic affliction
  • Domestic trouble
  • Dropsy
  • Egotism
  • Epileptic fits
  • Excessive sexual abuse
  • Excitement as officer
  • Exposure and hereditary
  • Exposure and quackery
  • Exposure in army
  • Fever and jealousy
  • Fighting fire
  • Suppressed masturbation
  • Suppression of menses
  • The war
  • Time of life
  • Uterine derangement
  • Veneral excesses
  • Vicious vices
  • Women trouble
  • Superstition
  • Shooting of daughter
  • Small pox
  • Snuff eating for two years
  • Spinal irritation
  • Gathering in the head
  • Greediness
  • Grief
  • Gunshot wound
  • Hard study
  • Rumor of husband murder
  • Salvastion army
  • Scarlatina
  • Seduction & disappointment
  • Self abuse
  • Sexual abuse & stimulants
  • Sexual derangement
  • False confinement
  • Feebleness of intellect
  • Fell from horse in war
  • Female desease
  • Dissipation of nerves

Cover photo: allanswart via Getty Images
Source: Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum (talawv.com)

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