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Showing posts from January, 2019

Whitchurch Hospital

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Whitchurch Psychiatric Hospital opened in 1908, after a long ten year construction. The site itself is set over 5 acres of ground, and could treat up to 750 patients. Some of these being permanent patients, whom would live out their lives on the site. Because of this the site was quite self-sufficient, having a bakers, butchers and two fields dedicated to crop growing and the raising of livestock. (Patients were often encouraged to take a role as part of their treatment). Patients were treated for a variety of psychological conditions, varying from Mania to Moral Imbecility (women having children out of wedlock), masturbatory insanity and many forms of Schizophrenia. The first medical superintendent was Dr Goodall, whom championed the idea that all mental illness was the result of physical issues, that caused changes to the brain. Finding these causes therein would result in a cure. For example, Mosquitoes were used to induce malaria, which raised the patients body temperature, pot