Asylum Doctors In The 19th Century

Even though treatments in the 19th century weren’t as harsh as those in the 18th century, many patients were perceived as a threat to the public safety until physicians began changing their tactics toward treatment. In the beginning of the 19th century, “...asylum doctors applied various treatments to patients' bodies, most often hydrotherapy, electrical stimulation and rest”(Holtzman) to correct the nervous system that they perceived as flawed. Doctors were still cruel toward patients, and put them through physical pain in hopes of killing the illness inside them. Also, most physicians held a somatic view on mental illness and felt that the main cause of the mental health problems laid in the nervous system. Soon, however, when the private