Skip Navigation Bar
Diseases of the Mind: Highlights of American Psychiatry through 1900
Photograph by Joseph Parrish of inmates at the Imbecile Asylum, Burlington, N.J., approximately 1886, showing a young man on the left and a young woman on the right in formal, late 19th-century attire looking directly into the camera.  NLM/IHM Image A019401. Portrait of Benjamin Rush seated, hand to head, glasses on forehead, right pose, by Thomas Sully.  NLM/IHM Image: B022637. Lithograph of head of French soldier facing right with brain exposed, from Joseph Vimont’s Traité de phrénologie humaine et compare (Paris, 1832).  NLM Call number: BF V765t 1835. “Maniac”, showing a A woman in a straight-jacket sitting on her side with her feet drawn up on a bench, she is supported by a wall behind the bench, from Etienne Equirol’s Des maladies mentales considerees sous les rapports medicale, hygienique et medico-legal (Paris, 1838).  NLM/IHM Image A013387. The tranquilizing chair of Dr. Benjamin Rush.  A patient is sitting in a chair; his body is immobilized by straps at the shoulders, arms, waist, and feet; a box-like apparatus is used to confine the head. There is a bucket attached beneath the seat. NLM/IHM Image A013394. Dr. Philippe Pinel in the courtyard of the Salpêriere Hospital in Paris, gravure by Leon Goupil after painting by Robert-Fleury. Pinel stands in the courtyard as a woman patient is freed from her chains; other women patients are chained to wooden posts attached to a building.  NLM/IHM Image B021323. Introduction Early Psychiatric Hospitals & Asylums Benjamin Rush, M.D.: The Father of American Psychiatry The 1840s: Early Professional Institutions & Lay Activisim 19th-Century Psychiatrists of Note 19th-Century Psychiatric Debates Diseases of the Mind: Highlights of American Psychiatry through 1900