Being stricken with a mental illness or disorder is hard enough on a person, but some had the misfortune to be born in an age where medical understanding of the mind was not like it is today. Up until the 1960s the methods for trying to cure or improve the behaviors of the mentally ill were bordering on inhumane. The different types of mental illness weren’t understood, and the treatments were basically taking a stab in the dark. If there any improvement, (even if the improvement was putting a violent man into a vegetative state) that was reason enough to continue using these methods on people.

Straight Jacket

Of course there was the general treatment of putting a person in a straight jacket, and then in a padded room so that they could not injure themselves or others, but that didn’t do much towards ‘fixing’ the person. Some other methods of improvement included wrapping the individual in sheets that were wet thoroughly with water and then put in a freezer, or by submerging them up to their chin in an ice bath. This was supposed to calm them, but generally reeked havoc on their bodies. Other ways to cure included electroshock therapy, castration on sex offenders, insulin shock therapy, and the infamous lobotomy.

A lobotomy could be used to ‘treat’ anything from schizophrenia to depression, or (if it was closer to the 1930’s range of time) for ridding undesirable qualities people found in their children such as “youthful defiance” or “moodiness”. Could you imagine telling your parents that you ‘aren’t going to live by their rules anymore’ and their response would be to take you to the doctor to get part of your brain removed or destroyed? It seems terrifying, but it happened, quite often.
The techniques varied, sometimes it was as explained in that article; the surgeon would insert an ice pick behind your eye and squish it around against your brain. But other times it involved opening up the skull and removing parts of specific lobes, or drilling a small hole and pouring boiling water inside.

The mentally ill of this time were poor poor souls indeed. Be grateful that you were born without illness, or at the very least, born in a time where it could be treated properly.

May we reconvene under the blood red moon,
-Black Widow