I read an article some time ago about a hospital that had a big atrium with lots of green plants and a concert grand with piano music wafting upwards, but now of course I can't find it.
When I was researching the early years of the Danvers State Hospital for [a story I am very proud of and care a lot about which is now stuck in publication hell thanks to plague], I was fascinated and touched to discover that its therapeutic regime was big into sunlight, flowers, being outside, doing occupational therapy, and other niceties which were simply considered good for people who had either temporarily broken down or were dysfunctional for life, in either of which cases they might as well have nice things to look at and a working postal service to send letters through. They had a hospital orchestra which played for dances. Dahlias were the Victorian symbol for madness, so they were used in a lot of the architecture and decoration. It was such a far cry from the snake pit of its later reputation, I wanted to shake the twentieth century. Like, Dr. Kirkbride was wrong in his belief that the majority of mental illness was curable in the same way as physical injury, but he wasn't wrong in his belief that people could heal from trauma or just be more stable in a supportive environment, he was light-years ahead of the prevailing conceptions of sanity and insanity in the mid-nineteenth century, and either way his approach of compassion regardless of cause has it all over, er, most of our current healthcare system.
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When I was researching the early years of the Danvers State Hospital for [a story I am very proud of and care a lot about which is now stuck in publication hell thanks to plague], I was fascinated and touched to discover that its therapeutic regime was big into sunlight, flowers, being outside, doing occupational therapy, and other niceties which were simply considered good for people who had either temporarily broken down or were dysfunctional for life, in either of which cases they might as well have nice things to look at and a working postal service to send letters through. They had a hospital orchestra which played for dances. Dahlias were the Victorian symbol for madness, so they were used in a lot of the architecture and decoration. It was such a far cry from the snake pit of its later reputation, I wanted to shake the twentieth century. Like, Dr. Kirkbride was wrong in his belief that the majority of mental illness was curable in the same way as physical injury, but he wasn't wrong in his belief that people could heal from trauma or just be more stable in a supportive environment, he was light-years ahead of the prevailing conceptions of sanity and insanity in the mid-nineteenth century, and either way his approach of compassion regardless of cause has it all over, er, most of our current healthcare system.