| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 112.4

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 112.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Richard L. Lael, Barbara Brazos, and Margot Ford McMillen. Evolution of a Missouri Asylum: Fulton State Hospital, 1851–2006. Columbia: University of Missouri Press. 2007. Pp. xvii, 252. $39.95.
Richard L. Lael, Barbara Brazos, and Margot Ford McMillen record the history of Missouri's first public mental institution. Its story closely parallels that of many other state hospitals, which began with optimistic hopes of curing mental illness and ended with greatly reduced expectations. In the 1840s the mentally ill in Missouri, as elsewhere, were housed in county jails or in some instances "let out" to the lowest private bidder for care, a system that often produced disastrous results.	1
Following national trends, the Missouri legislature voted to establish a lunatic asylum in 1847, acting not only from humanitarian concerns but also to protect the public from the most seriously disturbed. As the institution rapidly became overcrowded and understaffed, initial programs of moral treatment that emphasized a calm pleasant environment and a precise routine gave way to other tactics to restore sanity. These treatments included drugs, hydrotherapy, convulsive shock, and lobotomies. Milder approaches such as occupational therapy, psychodrama, recreational therapy, and token economies followed.	2
From its origin the Fulton institution suffered from the related problems of underfunding and politics. After the asylum accepted its first patients in the winter of 1851–1852, its heating system proved faulty and never adequately heated the building. It was not replaced until 1859, after a young patient, Theodore McGready, accidentally burned to death while trying to keep warm in the stove room.	. . .

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