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

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|Title= Central State Hospital
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|Title= Elgin State Hospital
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|Image= Elgin.jpg
 
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|Body= Chartered in 1837, Central State Hospital was a product of the nineteenth century's social reform movement. Since its founding, the hospital not only has cared for thousands of patients but also has been the focus of political discussions in Georgia regarding the role of government and public health. By the 1960s Central State Hospital had become the largest mental health institution in the United States.
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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.
  
Movements to reform prisons, create public schools, and establish state-run hospitals for the mentally ill swept across the nation during the first decades of the nineteenth century. In 1837 Georgia politicians responded by passing a bill calling for the creation of a "State Lunatic, Idiot, and Epileptic Asylum." Located in Milledgeville, the state capital at that time, construction of the facility was completed in October 1842, and the hospital admitted its first patient later that year.
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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...]]
 
 
Care of patients was based on the "institution as family" model, which asserted that hospitals were best organized when they resembled extended families. This model met with great success at Milledgeville, particularly under the leadership of Dr. Thomas A. Green, who served at the hospital from 1845 to 1879. Green ate with staff and patients daily and abolished such physical restraints as chains and ropes. The hospital also became increasingly custodial as the population evolved from the acutely disturbed to the chronically ill and organically disabled, many of whom were veterans of the Civil War (1861-65) with little chance of achieving a successful return to their families.  [[Central State Hospital|Click here for more...]]
 
 
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Revision as of 04:07, 22 October 2023

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...