Syphilis In Jamestown

Guy Ferguson, a strong-willed man who endured 13 admittances into Crownsville Hospital after the amendment to allow all races – not just blacks – was interviewed and recounted his stories that he had experienced in the asylum. Ferguson became the victim of “being stripped of his clothes, locked in seclusion…” (Stevens) Ferguson tried escaping the asylum several times only to be brought back. The doctors forced him to induce anti-psychotic medication called Thorazine even knowing that he was highly allergic to it. In addition to that, Ferguson told the interviewer accounts of the staff causing violence and sexually harassing patients. Because of the severe overcrowding and mistreatment occurring in the Crownsville Negro Insane Asylum, black
Most immediately, starting with smallpox and scarlet fever. At this time, there were reports that the earliest accounts of these two illnesses were commonly seen near the birth of the institution itself. Tuberculosis, a bacterial disease mostly found in the lungs, became the following major illness that was a problem at Crownsville and never seemed to go away, as it has been reported several times throughout the years. Syphilis, a sexually transmitted disease that was found in the African American population highly at this time, was also a fatal disease that affected the patient's vigor. The patients were packed like sardines in this institution, which is the reason that so many people were infected with these illnesses. At this time, hygiene was not a very high priority and there was also prejudice against African Americans, which made their needs lesser in the minds of their white caretakers. Crownsville had not instituted any regulations against opposite genders in their wards, nor were there any regulations against age differences. This means that men and women of all ages were in the hospital without much control of what they were doing with each other or to each other. Despite it being highly fear-provoking, children came in contact with drunks, sex offenders, and many other criminally insane persons in the hospital. The overcrowding left very little room for doctors to
Children were not allowed to play with toys and ordinarily never went to school. If the patients – young or old – were known to have obedience issues, they’d be chained to their beds, walls, or chairs in shackles “because they posed a risk to themselves and others” (Gordon) for hours on end – an idea that’d only be seen in a horror movie. In addition to the ghastly evidence of the disciplinary measures the staff took, people have come across reports from newspapers in the Crownsville area that suggested some children were injected with Hepatitis until the 1960’s for unknown reasons. Whether the allegations are true, is unknown. On several occasions, patients were taken from the facility in Baltimore for testing of medicines and other medical treatments. Most of the time, doctors would not consult with the families of the patients because at this time, they were under the misconception that it was unnecessary for them to tell the families what they were doing – or they didn’t want to be held accountable for any complications that happened during their tests. A common procedure called Pneumoencephalography was done on many of the patients in the Crownsville Center, including Elsie Lacks, the eldest daughter of Henrietta Lacks. This excruciatingly painful procedure drained the cerebra-spinal fluid from a person’s head by drilling a hole into their skull. The surgeons would substitute the fluid with oxygen temporarily