From solitary confinement to psychopharmacological
medicines
 A
solitary confinement cell at the hospital
I am standing in a small and rectangular room with a high ceiling.
In the middle of the room there is a bed that occupies a great deal
of the floor. The shutters are closed and the only light that leaks
into the room comes from the chink of the door. The scene is a solitary
confinement cell, which has been reconstructed in a pavilion at
the hospital of Saint Lars in the Swedish town Lund. When standing
in this cell you suddenly seem to come very close to the people
who once lived here. What kind of feelings did the patient have
who lied there quite alone, about a hundred years ago?
The cries from the asylum sounded over
the sea
In the summer evenings the cries from another asylum, the hospital
of SŠter, sounded over the sea right to the city. The city of SŠter
is a small town situated in the middle parts of Sweden. The inhabitants
of the town SŠter could both hear and feel the agony of the patients
at the asylum, as they screemed or quarrelled with their inner voices.
However, in the middle of the nineteen fifties, when the new psychopharmacological
drugs arrived, the screems silenced. In a book about mental hospitals
and the history of psychiatry, written by the Swedish journalist
Vanna Beckman, people from the town SŠter witness about these circumstances.
The Swedish journalist Tord Ajanki has also written a book where
he describes the situation of the psychiatric care before the introduction
of modern psychopharmacological medicines.
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