Bathing therapy, apomorfine and
sleeping cures
 The
picture belongs to the Medicinhistoriska Museet, Lund. Click on
the picture to see a larger photography.
Bathing therapy lasting for days
During the later part of the nineteenth century bathing therapy
was introduced. Even the bathing therapy which was utilized right
up to the end of the nineteen forties, aimed at calming the anxious
patients. The patient was submerged into a water of 36 degrees Celsius,
and sometimes a sail with a hole for the head was fastened over
him or her. The bathing lasted for a couple of hours or days. Some
individuals probably had a comfortable and relaxed time, while others
found it tough. The staff regarded the supervision of the bathing
patients as the most trying of all the tasks at the asylum. These
patients were not always so calm and easy to handle. They would
scream and spatter so that water with excrement splashed over the
attendant, who was often alone with up to five patients.
The story of Svea: "My skin fell
off and the flesh appeared"
This is the story of Svea, in a book about mental hospitals and
the history of psychiatry, written by the Swedish journalist Vanna
Beckman. Svea lay in the bath day and night for three weeks:
| "My skin fell off so the flesh appeared,
my feet became quite spongy and wrinkled. My hole body ached.
They came and fed us there in the bath. Sometimes they gave
me injections. I remember getting apomorphine because I kept
singing so much. I sang ( a popular Swedish song about a seaman
who loves the sea) during the round. The doctor then prescribed
an injection. My head was in a whirl and I vomited. But then
I was feeling better and I got going with my singing again.
I beat time in the tub so that everyone should hear. The more
they maltreated me, the worse I got."" |
Apomorfine and sleeping cures
Apomorpine which the doctor gave Svea provokes vomiting and was
ordinated as a sedative. In the latest decades the American scientist
Carol Tamminga has shown that apomorpine really has the ability
to alleviate some psychotic symptoms. Other methods that were utilized
in the beginning of the twentieth century were sleeping cures, where
the patients got bromides or barbiturates which put them to sleep.
In rare cases the sleeping cures lasted for several days, sometimes
even weeks, with interrupts for feeding and personal care only.
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