Difference between revisions of "Portal:Featured Article Of The Week"

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|Title= Medfield State Hospital
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|Title= Elgin State Hospital
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|Image= Medfield01.png
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|Body= Medfield State Hospital was founded by an act of the State Legislature in 1892. The property consisted of several hundred acres and twenty two buildings. Over the years the buildings and land were increased until it reached its maximum size of some fifty eight buildings and nine hundred plus acres.
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|Body= On December 28,1869, the Board of Trustees met to examine the nine plans that had been submitted from various architects for the new asylum. The Board had enlisted the aid of two prominent superintendents to act as advisers. One was Dr. Andrew McFarland, M.D., the Superintendent of the state hospital in Jacksonville. The other was Dr. Richard J. Patterson, M.D., former superintendent of state hospitals in Indianapolis, Indiana and Mt. Pleasant, Iowa. Interestingly, the building design of the Jacksonville hospital was largely based on that of the Indiana State Hospital, and is an example of the increasingly common practice of copying designs from one hospital for use at another.
  
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The Hospital has had as many as 2,200 patients on the property and a staff of in the range of 500-900 persons. It was in effect, a self contained community with a population at the time rivaling the size of the Town of Medfield. The facility supplied its own power, heat, water, sewage system, and raised its own livestock and produce. Medfield State Hospital claimed to be the first mental health hospital to be built on the “cottage plan” with individual buildings to allow for better light ventilation, easier classification, and to create a more homelike environment.
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The original name of the Elgin Mental Health Facility (its current name) was The Northern Illinois Hospital and Asylum for the Insane. The doors opened in 1872, however, construction of additional buildings continued until 1874. A rumor circulated for year, and still exists that the State of Illinois approached the City of Elgin with plans to construct a mental institution and a college and offered Elgin one or the other. As the rumor goes, Elgin took the mental institution, De Kalb took Northern Illinois University. As Elgin Historian and celebrated Elgin History author, Bill Briska points out the rumor, "...is totally false" He goes on to state that, "The state hospital was founded in 1869 and the college in 1892. (there are) No connection between the events".  [[Elgin State Hospital|Click here for more...]]
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During the Kennedy Administration, in the early 1960s, Congress passed a law requiring that all mental health patients in the United States be housed or hospitalized in the least restrictive environment possible. In the early seventies, as a result of this law, patients, guardians, and parents of patients filed a class action suit against the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the Department of Mental Health (DMH) to require the DMH to conform with the federal law. In 1974, a federal court consent decree was entered into by the DMH resulting in the relocation of most mental patients from isolated mental institutions to community based halfway houses and hospitals. A result of this decision has been to reduce the number of patients at Medfield to approximately 200. It has also set in motion DMH’s plan to eventually dispose all or part of the Medfield facility, along with seven other similar institutions across the State.  [[Medfield State Hospital|Click here for more...]]
 
 
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Revision as of 04:12, 3 July 2022

Featured Article Of The Week

Elgin State Hospital


Elgin.jpg

On December 28,1869, the Board of Trustees met to examine the nine plans that had been submitted from various architects for the new asylum. The Board had enlisted the aid of two prominent superintendents to act as advisers. One was Dr. Andrew McFarland, M.D., the Superintendent of the state hospital in Jacksonville. The other was Dr. Richard J. Patterson, M.D., former superintendent of state hospitals in Indianapolis, Indiana and Mt. Pleasant, Iowa. Interestingly, the building design of the Jacksonville hospital was largely based on that of the Indiana State Hospital, and is an example of the increasingly common practice of copying designs from one hospital for use at another.

The original name of the Elgin Mental Health Facility (its current name) was The Northern Illinois Hospital and Asylum for the Insane. The doors opened in 1872, however, construction of additional buildings continued until 1874. A rumor circulated for year, and still exists that the State of Illinois approached the City of Elgin with plans to construct a mental institution and a college and offered Elgin one or the other. As the rumor goes, Elgin took the mental institution, De Kalb took Northern Illinois University. As Elgin Historian and celebrated Elgin History author, Bill Briska points out the rumor, "...is totally false" He goes on to state that, "The state hospital was founded in 1869 and the college in 1892. (there are) No connection between the events". Click here for more...

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