Bethlem Hospital

Yesterday, you saw Tom Rakewell ending up in Bethlem Hospital, one of the London hospitals for mentally ill people.  These are the statues from over a former door at Bethlem.  They represent "melancholy" and "raving."  Today I would identify them as the two opposing emotional states of bipolar disorder, what we used to call manic-depression.  One pole of bipolar is severe depression ("melancholy") and even suicidality.  The other pole is mania ("raving") to the point where someone is unable to control themselves and has pressured speech, tangential conversation, and can be either irritable and angry or grandiose and euphoric.  The guy above is so manic he has to be shackled.  Since people were bipolar 250 years ago, how can anyone argue it is not a biochemical imbalance?  (Image courtesy Wellcome Library, London.)

Great website on Bethlem Hospital at http://www.bethlemheritage.org.uk. Click on the “Visiting Bethlem” section. Clicking on the “How to Use” box worked better for me than on the “Click Here to Begin”.
For a description of what visitors would have seen of the hospital, click on “Attitudes to Mental Health”, go to 1760 on the timeline and click on the female “FAQ” photo posted there.
“Was visiting ever a positive experience?” is presented when you click on the male FAQ photo
For a theological reason to visit Bethlem, move the timeline cursor to 1780 and click on the woman’s photo.
For one gentleman’s abhorrence of gawkers visiting Bethlem, click on the 1796 box.
If you click on ‘Visitors” and then on the FAQs above 1700 and 1790, the questions of what people really saw at Bethlem and why visitation was stopped will be answered.
For another perspective on how patients were treated, go to “Staff” and then the box marked “1786.” Accessed 9 and 12 September 2012.