The best specimen of a tyrant : the ambitious Dr. Abraham Van Norstrand and the Wisconsin Insane Hospital

344 Pages·2013·12.51 MB·English

by  Doherty

The
Best Specimen
Tyrant
of a

The
B S
est pecimen
T
yrant
of a
The Ambitious Dr. Abraham Van Norstrand
and the Wisconsin Insane Hospital
THOMAS DOHERTY
University of Iowa Press
Iowa City
University of Iowa Press, Iowa City 52242
Copyright © 2007 by Thomas Doherty
First University of Iowa Press edition 2013
www.uiowapress.org
Printed in the United States of America
Design by Jennifer Bottcher
No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means without
permission in writing from the publisher. All reasonable steps have been taken to contact
copyright holders of material used in this book. The publisher would be pleased to make
suitable arrangements with any whom it has not been possible to reach.
Photographs of Abraham Van Norstrand and his son courtesy Neville Public Museum of
Brown County. All other photographs courtesy the Wisconsin Historical Society.
The University of Iowa Press is a member of Green Press Initiative and is committed to
preserving natural resources.
Printed on acid-free paper
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Doherty, Thomas.
The best specimen of a tyrant: the ambitious Dr. Abraham Van Norstrand and the
Wisconsin Insane Hospital / Thomas Doherty.—1st University of Iowa Press ed. 2013.
p. cm.
Originally published: Madison, Wis.: Spenser-Hoyt, c2007.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-1-60938-146-2, ISBN-10: 1-60938-146-7 (pbk)
ISBN-13: 978-1-60938-161-5, ISBN-10: 1-60938-161-0 (e-book)
1. Van Norstrand, Abraham, 1825 –1883. 2. Physicians—Wisconsin—Biography.
3. Wisconsin State Hospital for the Insane—History. 4. Psychiatric hospitals—
Wisconsin—History—19th century. 5. Businessmen—Wisconsin—Biography. I. Title.
R154.V356D64 2013
362.2'109775—dc23 2012024073
In democratic times enjoyments are more intense than in
the ages of aristocracy, and the number of those who partake
in them is vastly greater; but, on the other hand, it must be
admitted that man’s hopes and desires are oftener blasted, the
soul is more stricken and perturbed, and care itself more keen.
. . . Complaints are made in France that the number of suicides
increases; in America suicide is rare, but insanity is said to
be more common there than anywhere else.
—alexis de tocqueville, Democracy in America

CONTENTS
Introduction ...............................................................................ix
Prologue: A Locked Room, a Battered Body ..............................1
1. “The Fortune I Desired and Expected” .............................19
2. “I Soon Found My Hands Full” ........................................27
3. “My Blood Is Up” ..............................................................47
4. “The Best Specimen of a Tyrant” ......................................57
5. “A Severe Punishment of a Deluded and Spiteful
People” .............................................................................65
6. “The Whole Camp Still as Death” ....................................77
7. “The First Negro Hospital” ...............................................89
8. “The Wails of the Wounded” ..........................................101
9. “Friends and Enemies” ....................................................113
10. “A Second Class Man” .....................................................129
11. “The Usual Little Jarrings in the Ward” ..........................145
12. “A Critical and Searching Examination” .........................163
13. “Patients that Manifested a Dislike to
Dr. Van Norstrand” ........................................................181
14. “Little Short of Murderous Neglect” ...............................207
15. “Rotten Eggs” ..................................................................221
16. “A Solemn Court of Impeachment” ................................233
17. “Abandon Hope” .............................................................245
viii • The Best Specimen of a Tyrant
18. “A True Gentleman of the Old School” ..........................263
Epilogue: “Three Percent Hastings” ........................................281
Acknowledgments ..................................................................289
Notes .......................................................................................291
Bibliography ............................................................................317
Index........................................................................................327
INTRODUCTION
For those who learned about mental hospitals from One Flew Over
the Cuckoo’s Nest and other popular fare, it may be hard to believe
that once upon a time those isolated, mazelike institutions were
expected to usher in a kind of golden age. In the early nineteenth
century, a group of asylum doctors came together to argue that in-
sanity was not a curse but a curable disease. Build hospitals to our
demanding specifications, and, they vowed, we will not only comfort
and nourish your suffering loved ones; we will make them whole
again. Thus was launched the so-called “Hospital Movement.” Over
the following decades, huge and breathtakingly expensive facilities
went up in virtually every state. So much was invested. So much was
expected in return.
It wasn’t long before those places were famous mostly for the
scandals uncovered there. Later still they were dismissed as “ware-
houses.” What went wrong?
That question was certainly not on my mind in 1972, when, as
a graduate student, I started a year-long field placement at Mendota
Mental Health Institute, on the north shore of the lake in Madison,
Wisconsin, for which it is named. What did strike me then was how
puny the utilitarian, 1950s-era brick buildings appeared among the
great oaks that towered over them and the grassy fields that sur-
rounded them and swept down to the lake. Such a majestic setting
deserved architecture to match.
Eventually I went to work at a treatment unit in one of those
buildings, and from nursing assistants I learned that in fact a palatial
stone presence had once dominated the landscape, although nothing
remained but a tunnel to nowhere, a half-buried greenhouse, and a
span of stone foundation.