Eastern State Hospital

Hi, I'm Holly and I'm Hailey. Welcome to Mountain Mysteries Tales from Appalachia. Welcome back. Hi.

Hello. Oh, are you all right? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. No vomiting. No.

It's it's the end of the year for public school employees and we're dying. We're all we're all fine. You're ready for the break. We're all ready for the break.

No, I'm blaming. Yeah, it's going to be great to not be paid for too much. Yes, but you know it would be nice to have a summer break. Yes, it is the schedule is fantastic.

Okay, is not one. Sorry. That was my sweet baby Jesus. Yeah, the chocolate peanut butter porter.

You're welcome by the Duke Law Brewing Company. I think I kind of before it's quite delightful. Sorry. You all know it looks fantastic.

That's a day we've had a a lovely evening of pizza and an entertainment entertainment. Yes. There was entertainment. Yes.

Provided we listen to a lot of firetruck songs. So many firetrucks. It's a group called 20 Trucks if you all are interested and my son loves to listen to it. Their group that sings just random songs about trucks and construction trucks and there's one called aircraft Eicer.

Oh, that's a favorite of his. Yeah, it kind of it kind of sounds like a oh gosh, Kate. Gosh, what's your name? From the Aedes Kate Bush.

Yes. Kate Bush songs that airplane D. I. has a very Kate Bush sounding.

Yeah. Yeah. And then you know, what was the one? Hook and ladder.

Hook and ladder. We heard that one repeat. Yep. And then there's another one.

Just the fire truck song. Yeah. That's a good one. They're both they're both a boss.

Well, when he hears the fire truck song is when he goes and he puts on his little fireman costume and he just starts running around. Yeah. It was um, there was a lot of entertainment there. And then he turned into a puppy.

He was a dog and then he wiped out like hardcore wipes out. Then he hit the table. It was game over. There's a lot of crying.

Game over. Yeah. I had to kiss it. Well, he did that thing where like hold his breath where you know it's about to be like a big scream.

Yeah, like he was actually hurt because a lot of times like they just bounce off and you just ignore it and like go and it's fine. But this was a like. Tell his breath, had his mouth open and you knew the scream was coming. Yeah, and then it came.

Yeah. And he was tight. Yeah. I love him.

But he takes after his mother. He's kind of a clumsy kid. He's kind of clumsy. He just bounces.

No, no, but he's just kind of a clumsy kid. He's not a super athletic kind of kid. He's very intelligent, very smart guy. But he's just not like not going to be Mr.

Athlete. And I'm okay with that. But your mom had bought him and I told you this earlier. Your mom had bought him these construction booths and they were the ones we told you a couple weeks ago.

He discovered and they're like four sizes too big and he can only wear them in the house. He's obsessed with them. But he trips a lot in them. And I told Haley that we had to put the booths in the witness protection program and he currently cannot find them.

And he has asked about them and he said, where am I boots? And I said, I don't know. They have they walked away. They are probably waiting until you're a baker.

And he was like, no, I'm bigger now. It's a lot. Yeah. He was birth control folks.

Now, I'm not here's the thing. I'm grateful. I love my kid. That's not that's not the issue.

But it's hard. Yeah. There's a lot of meltdowns. Yeah, there's a lot of like I am a person who does not really have any maternal instinct.

There's not a maternal bone in my body really. Like I'm kind of just resigned to I'm going to be the cool aunt that you hang out with every once in a while. Like I'm gonna be really great at you know, picking you up when you're drunk on the side of the road where you're like, well, he's all my mom. I'm like, I got you.

We won't do that. And then I will tell your mom. But I'm gonna make you believe that I'm not and then I'm gonna convince your mom that she found out a different way than me telling me. And I'll be still have that.

And I'll play it. Relationship. So your friend Cooper told me, you know, as opposed to your aunt, you hate me. She dropped you off drunk at the front door.

He heard you were coming tonight and he was so excited. Yeah. Oh, yeah. We were on the phone.

I was on my way out here and traffic was horrific. I was also stuck in that traffic. So we were realized we were like probably 25 cars behind each other. I was behind and I could hear him over the like hands-free Bluetooth thing where he was like, it's Haley coming over.

Andy, say, like, I was like, H is hard. Yeah. And yeah. But yeah, Andy, he's Haley and he, he went, yeah.

It was really cute. I'm like, absolutely will be there. Yes, he was absolutely. I love other people's children.

I do not want them in my house full time. I said that other day to somebody else. And they were like, I don't think you say that out loud. Of course, can.

Because there's a picture of someone I work with had their baby and adorable baby, very cute little girl. And I was like, Oh, it's so cute. And like, I would love to, you know, meet and hold and snuggle that sweet baby. I don't need it in my house.

I feel like having a child has made me less maternal. Does that sound weird? No. Um, so I was the person who was like, I'm just built to be a mom.

Like, I've just always be a mom, you know. And I didn't have my son until I was 36. But it's really interesting because, you know, once you do it and you have it, you're kind of like, all right, it's like the novelty of it. Like other people should be like, Oh, and now it's like, yeah, I'm good.

So I'm like, probably one and done because I'm like, yeah, I'm pretty good. So I work with someone who, she and her husband, they have between them. Well, they have three kids. And they are six, two and one.

And what I'm getting, like, we work together. So when I'm getting ready for work, I think, and I'm like, having a hard time, like getting my life together and getting out the door and like doing all these things, it's literally just me and my dog. And I'm like, having a hard time. I'm like, Oh, my gosh, I'm so frustrated.

I'm like, I can't get everything together. I can't do this. And I just sit for a moment and sit on myself and go, defending us three children. And she can do it.

And she does it well. And she's always put together. Like she would die, like if I said this, because like she doesn't think so. But like, she's gorgeous.

Like, I feel like her hair always looks perfect. Like her face. Like she just, is she's just like a pretty person and has her like just, I'm like, you were like, you have to get her like, she'll come in and be like, just like talking about, you know, how crazy her morning was. And I'm like, I can get my dog to pee in the yard this morning.

I was going to melt down and you've literally got three children and your husband together. And out the door dropped off and you're only like two minutes late to work. Meanwhile, I rolled in like 10 minutes late and I'm like, disheveled and looked like a homeless person. I'm like, I'm gonna work with a dog peed.

I'm like, I'm ready to work with the children. I know I, I do that to where I'm like, you know, we had a rough morning and he got up at 445 and wouldn't go back to sleep. And so, you know, and then he wants to be breakfast and he wants to play and I'm trying to get ready for work. And my child is very clingy.

You know, he's an only child. He is a mama's boy. And so follows me wherever I go, whatever I'm doing. And then finds himself into some mischief, wasting toilet paper, hiding my makeup, dropping my bronzer on the floor and it going everywhere, you know, like, just like some days you're like, can we just sleep in?

Can you just sleep in? Just like, just like, let me get up before you. Because usually it's him going, mama, I'm away. That's starting.

It's starting so early. So, well, on that note, we're gonna get any milk. It's fine. I wouldn't care anymore.

Um, not that we can't wait for my friend to turn it on. It's fine. I can hear her. I can hear her right now saying that could have taken two minutes.

It's fine for Trina. You want to come do this? Get over here. She has before.

I know she has a day. I love to come back. Welcome. Get on your trip to caravan and get over.

Yes. Great song. I still think of that song and her voice to it. I know it was beautiful.

She's great. She's very she can be on her new album. Harder box. I'm waiting for you.

It's country now. It's gonna happen. Yeah. I thought about that in a while.

All right. Um, okay. We're gonna head to my favorite place. Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia.

I've never been there actually. Oh my gosh. No, I'm not. Really?

Is it that guy? Yes. It's my I love Colonial Williamsburg. Oh, I love it.

It's like you're gonna hurt me. Okay. I'm not gonna come at you. It's totally fine.

It is back that. Just like I mean, Colonial Times where they problematic absolutely. Do I love Colonial Williamsburg? Yes, I do.

It's haunted as hell. It is people in historically accurate costumes. It is like there are like blacksmithing places. They teach you about life and the colonial times.

It's just like an immersive experience. I like that. There are shops that you can like buy things at and like little eateries that are all like themed. Have you ever been accused of, uh, you know, witch or anything?

Why are there? No, um, new gold though. I want to go. I might go this summer.

I think you should be able to go. Love Colonial Williamsburg. Okay. It's fantastic.

And we're gonna talk about this place. And I still like I dream about this place because it's so freaking cool. I mean, just your wording is really intense. I can do your passion.

Never been. You have to go. It's so okay. We're gonna get her.

I'm gonna rethink that. I'll meet you there. Maybe your drive separately. Durd roads, horses and buggies.

Can you ride on the buggies? I think so. Okay. So I'm down for that.

I was too poor for that. So I walked. I was a poor colonial. Oh, do you get to be?

No. Oh, no. Okay. I just that's but you have to just embody it.

Oh, I want to but I want to be a rich colonial person. See, I was I was a witch. A poor witch. A poor witch.

A poor witch. Fine. Okay. So we are taking it back to 1773.

Yep. Williamsburg, Virginia. We're going to talk about a public hospital for persons of insane and disordered minds. Sounds right up here.

Yep. Okay. This was also known as the Eastern State Hospital. As opposed to the Western.

As opposed to the Western. Yeah. As opposed to the Western. There was no West.

Well, state. Right. Western part of the state. Yes.

But not Western America. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Yes. Okay. This is the first American hospital that was devoted to treating the mentally ill in the country. Interesting.

First one. Okay. It was first proposed by Francis. Vowquair, Vowquair, Vowquair, Vowquair.

I don't know. He was the Royal Governor of the colony of Virginia. Obvious. At the time.

So fencing. So he kind of made this proposal. And in 1776, they admitted, oh sorry, no, October 12th, 1773, they admitted their first patient. Okay.

So. Like most early medical health facilities, treatment was not great. I mean, we're talking about revolutionary times. Yes.

Yes. It could be pretty brutal. There were several bad procedures. One of them was dunking patients in ice baths.

Yep. And they lost consciousness. Yes. Which I hadn't really heard of that one before.

I heard of like the ice bath things, but the till they lost consciousness was kind of anyone for me. Because they feel like it's resetting the brain. Yes. It was like the precursor to the convulsive shock therapy, which is wild.

So, you know, it's not unsimilar to waterboarding in a way. Yeah. Where they would just kind of do this and play lost consciousness. They would bring them out of it of the water before they drowned.

Or died. So they could just reset their brains or had hypothermia. Yep. Theory behind the treatment was that it would shock patients back to their senses.

There were other treatments, including bleeding of patients and something with bowel movements. I guess just forcing a lot of bowel movements. So the old school ideology on that was part of your mental illness came from you not being able to properly defecate. So if we were able to remove the roughage and junk from your body, it would somehow get rid of your mental illness that would come out, obviously.

And so then you would start to feel more normal. Yeah. And they also believe they could do this by inducing vomiting. Same too.

And there also is a theory that it gets sort of evil. So a lot of mental illness was based on a religious thought of Satan or being evil. We're going to talk about evil here in a minute. Well, you're right here.

I mean, hello. It's all right. Oh, God. It's having a...

So, like this, you know, electrocution and all that also kind of came in and became this kind of standard form of treatment. Fun fact, I had a professor when I was getting my associate's theory that was very old school, taught abnormal psychology, believe that electric therapy was like the way to go. Still, this was like 20, probably 2012. And I was like, so literally to the point where if I didn't know the answer on a quiz, I would write something about electric shock therapy and how like I thought it was, I did not believe this, how I thought like this could tie into that and he would give me like full credit for it.

This is currently known as ECT. Yes. Electroconvulsive therapy. It's an idea that if your brainwaves are, you know, not really working in a line, yeah, that we can shock the body and it will put those brainwaves back in sync movement, right?

So, after years and years and years of doing this and it's hellacious on the body because it creates these involuntary movements in the body where you are fully awake and functional, but this is half, you know, it's very scary, you know, not pleasant. So, this is only in cases of like nowadays, like severe mental illness that this is like a last case scenario sort of thing to try and help you. So, I find that interesting that in 2012 he was such an advocate of that is almost like a first line of defense. I think he was like 80 something when he was teaching his class.

Oh, he was probably a lot of the stalks. He was a huge Freud fan. Oh, no, no, no, no. He really liked that guy.

They, yeah. Don't any of me. Just, yeah. So, that's kind of what I was doing with.

So, anyway, they were doing this back in colonial time. So, this is not something we should probably be doing. So, you want to back? No, thank you.

Doctors around this time. They also believe that the kind of a certain amount of intimidation would convince patients to change their behavior, like it's a choice. So, this is kind of like a scared straight power. Yes, pretty much.

Yeah. You haven't got chanked in the yard. Oh, that's another episode. Yeah.

So, kind of by thinking about today's standards for mental health, the way this was all set up was really nightmarish. Like worst case scenario kind of thing. But, you know, given what the society was at the time, it was kind of like, you know, we either imprison them or we tie them up at home and just like let them rot kind of thing. So, it's kind of, it's difficult to understand that even having a place where there was any kind of treatment was a step forward from what they were doing.

Actually, that's true. And at some point, you know, this is the process of studying and it's terrible to say that it's horrible to say, but you almost have to have guinea pigs to be and it's horrible to say about human beings, but to be able to create treatments and see what works and what doesn't work. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, before this, there was nothing.

This was the first thing, right? So, there was. I mean, you just lock your crazy family members in a closet? Yeah, pretty much.

I was like, well, I was like, well, I was like, well, I was like, well, yeah. Or like, you know, tie them down to like a bed or something and like just restrain them and then they die like fors and infections and those two kinds of things. Or just go crazy. I mean, just turn them out on the street and like let them wander into the woods and be like, all right.

Yeah, that would happen to you. Yes. She came out of the woods recently. Absolutely.

So, this royal governor, Francis, whatever his last name is, he was like, he really believed that this was not okay. We need to do something, you know, that's like, he found this place because he's like, we can't just, you know, turn these people out and not try to do something. So, he, there's a public speech that he made in 1766 of a before the hospital. Bring out your crazies.

And he argued for the legal confinement for the quote, set of people who are deprived of their senses and wonder about the country terrifying the rest of their fellow creatures. Interesting wording. Yeah. So, that's kind of what, you know, he didn't want these people just wandering around, scaring everyone, but also like for their own good to potentially maybe a threat to themselves or others.

Yeah, that's kind of where he was at. So, this was all kind of leading up to the revolutionary work. So, a lot of the rest of his speech was things about like taxes and reconciliation between England and the colony. So, this little kind of snippet was like, hey, we should also do something about mental health care.

He still was kind of backwards in his thinking. Again, this is the 1700s. So, he believed still that a lot of people who were mentally ill kind of chose mental illness. And that's just kind of, you know, we just have to figure out how to help them not make this choice.

Punish them for their behavior. So, he envisioned this place, this hospital to be a place where people could be cured by physicians who would try to restore them to reason, sort of retrain the brains. That's kind of what they were, they were at. So, physicians believed that any kind of deviant or antisocial behavior reflected the inner battle between good and evil inside that individual soul.

So, I mean, you got to think of the time period. We're talking about, this is kind of past the Puritan period, but kind of more pure tannical, like it's a good and evil. You must have a demon inside of you. And, you know, we'll do like, we'll get across, we'll be the hell out of you.

We'll do what we need to do to get to exercise the demon and the mental illness from your body. Yes. So, that's kind of where we're at. They believe that forces outside of the body and beyond the environment controlled our behavior.

Whereas my crucifix. Yeah, pretty much that. So, with this, there's kind of this weird dichotomy going on where they're like, yes, it's a choice, but also they're outside for evil forces impacting this. So, you're kind of help us to do anything about it.

So, that's a weird sort of- Maybe that you are, your senses are down, so you're vulnerable to Satan. Yeah. Yes. Exercising these demons in your body.

Yeah. So, that's where we're getting kind of some of the extra-sto-style treatments going on. So, the best that somebody could hope for was to persuade that force to leave. And that they were doing that in a way pretty much through like torture, of like cause so much discomfort that whatever evil force is causing you to be mentally ill, like, leaves your body, like, connects or so some kind of.

So, most patients at this time spent most of their time in the hospital chained to the wall of their cells. And some though were allowed to roam free, but they had to be strapped into street jackets. I mean, and definitely this is preferable to being at home tied up to your bed. Yeah.

I mean, in the comfort of your own home. Yeah. Still horrible, but wow. Yeah.

So, this is kind of the mentality of we're building this hospital. So, this is where- And if you think about it, this is so counterintuitive because we are creating insanity. Yes. People go insane when they're treated like animals.

Yeah. So, they developed this hospital to kind of ease the burden of care that was just on families. Yeah. Or on the like the local people to take care of these.

Were families paying- like, who is funding this? I don't really know. I think it was just a- so no, we're gonna talk about that. So, this was kind of a- as I guess later on, there's a lot of legislation that we'll talk about, but pretty much they were like sentenced to their.

Oh, almost like they committed a crime. Yes. This was a crime. Mental illness was a crime.

So, you were put there because we didn't want to- Well, not the age of everybody who built up. Yeah. Pretty much. So, that's kind of where we at.

So, where we're at. The original hospital- Where we at? Where we at. 24 cells.

And it was originally a two-story brick building. There was a keeper's quarters and a meeting room for the board of directors. Cells had a heavy door with a barred window that locked onto kind of that central corridor through there. A straw filled mattress was in the room, at a chamber pot.

There were wall chains attached to the patient's legs or wrist and then detached to the wall. And that was to prevent them from escaping. And they also used this as a form of therapy. Sure.

So, yeah. So, there was this kind of attitude that people needed to be restrained so that they could get a hold of their senses. Like you need to not be able to- For you to be able to find yourself and cleanse this evil out of your body. You don't need to be able to wander around and have any kind of free will.

So, it's kind of like how they swaddle babies, right? So, the idea of swaddling a baby is that so they feel like they're in the womb and safe and all those things. So, similar principle. I mean, if you are in a straight jacket, essentially, it's like kind of like being swaddled except with locks on it and whatever.

But kind of that idea of you can't hurt anybody but you're like giving yourself a hug in a way. So, you know, if we're getting really deep into that, it could be a similar approach. However, if you're in it all the time, that's not good. It's not good.

It's not good. It's not good for your body. No. Okay.

So, in 1790, we're going to jump in some years here, right? In 1790, we won the Revolution, by the way. Yeah, we did. We did do that.

Great. America. Ooh. F.U.

King George. By you. In 1790. No taxation without representation.

Sorry. We have high-fenced yards. These are also known as mad yards prison and they were added at each of the hospital, each end of this hospital. So, that the inmates, which is what they call them, could exercise outside.

Wonderful. So, we did that. We're going to jump again to the 1800s a little bit. Jumping kind of in.

Treatment of mentally ill patients becomes a little bit less harsh as we kind of enter the 1800s. There's a new approach that's emphasized firm but kind of encouragement to how patients change their behaviors. So, we're still not great. So, we're getting better.

Sounds like they're still being like beaten. Yeah. Oh, 100%. They introduced some organized work activities to keep patients busy.

There was a spinning room, which I think is like spinning yarn. It couldn't be like a spin class. You got this, go friend. Although, I think that an exercise spinning class would probably help someone who's dealing with mental health issue.

There's a shoe shop and a carpentry shop in the hospital. Okay. There was a vegetable garden and a wood yard on the grounds that offered work opportunities for male patients. This was so that they could make money.

Oh, absolutely. The institution. Yeah. The use of restraints was not really something they were doing anymore.

They were being used a lot less often. Patients were allowed to take carriage rides into town. That's all they were able to get out and about. By the 1880s, the hospital had grown and there were 450 patients and 10 structures on the property.

So, we've gone from a 24 cell to story building to this 10 structure compound on it. So, yeah, they grew a lot. So, despite this kind of seemingly counterproductive treatment that they received, of the 355 patients admitted from 1798 to 1824, there were 134 that were deemed cured and released back into society. Interesting.

So, that was just kind of a fun little fact. That is a great fact. Their return to sanity is mostly attributed to William Galt. He is actually the second of three galt to hold the position of keeper of the hospital.

So, they kept it in the family. He observed that patients admitted in the early stages of their illness were far more likely to benefit from the facility's treatment. Clinical treatment? Fall in line and get better.

Yeah. Then those that were so far into it. So, he, this, you know, galt really promoted that and sanity should not be equated with crime. Good.

Just because you're mentally ill, it does not mean you're a criminal. You know, he had said that individuals displaying erratic behavior should not be indiscriminately tossed into prison, but first brought to this hospital for evaluation. Okay. It's prison.

Okay. This prison. The word different prison. Yes.

Yes. So, that's kind of he, you know, any kind of erratic criminal behavior, you know, is the crime they're committing a product of their mental illness. And he's like, you need to bring them here first. So, we can check them out before you take them to the penitentiary.

To be fair, even though this asylum was not great and was very penitentiary, like, I mean, I like the idea because I feel like a lot of individuals nowadays who commit these crimes probably need some psychological assessments and some help prior to just let's just lock them up because that really helps their mental health issues. However, even with this warning, there were numerous individuals who were kind of eventually deemed to be quote unquote insane and admitted to the hospital that had already spent a year more in jail and had endured a lot more abuse from prison guards. So, because I had spent this time in jail and were met with all this abuse from guards, any attempt that physicians made to try to treat them was met with just rage and hostility and just they weren't able to be successful because they were being so horribly abused for these guards. Yeah.

Who would you trust? Right. I'm going to address anybody. Yeah, it's just I don't really know.

In 1833, the court of directors saw that stricter laws were passed requiring sheriffs to inform the hospital when they jailed someone suspected of insanity. But even with these laws around 50 in this document, they called them lunatics. 1833. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Remain jailed in 1841 due to the hospital's lack of available beds. So, what do I mean?

Is not unlike what it is now. I was going to say like how many people can truly get middle else services when there's not beds or treats? Yep. So, the same year the hospital asked for more funds to expand the buildings, which they did receive, the state allotted funds to employ eight male and six female slaves.

Think of where we are in the time period. To help God apply his quote moral treatment methods on a larger scale and help with patients day to day needs and say to menial labor and general upkeep of the building. So, slave labor. So, we're not paying for that.

And we're making money off of the individuals who are here because they have a garden and they're doing all the things. These are enslaved people that we have brought in to help us do this. Wonderful. So, not great.

Great. So, another kind of crazy thing that was going on around this time was there was a really big increase in syphilis, of course. So, because people are still doing the nasty. Yep.

So, there's a lot of syphilis cases. And fun fact, syphilis affects the brain. Sure does. Sure does.

So, that's why there's a significant to this hospital. Because the disease presents itself, psychosis, a lot of times. So, we're seeing paranoia. We're seeing delusions.

We're seeing hallucinations. No. Syphilis. Yep.

So, there's no kind of documented proof of the hospital actually used the one proven cure of syphilis, which is injecting the patient with blood from someone carrying malaria. I've never heard that before, but apparently that was like the thing to do. Okay. There were many facilities that did this across the country.

And there were some that were probably cured because of this very unsanctioned procedure. Well, because back then, there was no such thing as penicillin or crayons. Yep. So, they're just kind of, yeah.

All right. So, this hospital has been through Revolutionary War and now they're going to have to go to the Civil War. And the syphilis. And the syphilis.

Wow. On May 6, 1862, Union troops occupied Williamsburg. And they captured the asylum and replaced Dr. Galt with a Union physician.

Now, their fun fact, Virginia was the last state to secede from the Union. In the days preceding the occupation, their asylum employees fled to avoid capture that left 252 patients confined to their rooms with minimal supplies and no caretakers except for Dr. Galti state. To care for all those people.

To take care of all those people. Was he able to? I mean, these, this was days before. So, like, they only suffered a few days.

But yeah, he, I mean, as problematic of a person as he probably is, he didn't leave them. Like, he stayed. Like probably knowing full well he was going to be captured. And I, but he was like, you know what, I'm going to stay.

I mean, it says a lot. It does. It really does. And he truly did care about them.

I mean, it was barbaric. Yeah. But he did. He care.

Yeah. So, the next 20 years are kind of sketchy records wise. There's not a lot of information because of, you know, war. But war brought in a lot of new patients to the facility because mental health care does relate to the plunge.

Don't say, you don't say, and the really the prevailing theory of the north really viewed treatment of the mentally ill is kind of a waste of time and effort. Wait a minute, wait a minute. Here is a southerner listening that the Yankees, what is progressive as we thought they were? This is mentally ill get out here.

Listen, the other day I saw some guy tied up to a bed. And I thought, screw it, just shoot him. Just go on. You know, so here's the thing.

You're not as progressive as you think you are. I think they were kind of like, you know, why would we even bother treating these people? Like let's just turn them loose. See what happens?

And so we had kind of a big like deinstitutionalization sort of thing happening here before the major deinstitutionalization. Things come in waves like that. Yeah, for sure. June 7th, 1885.

This is a year after the hospital was renamed the Eastern State Hospital. The facility burned to the ground. Was it you? No.

Okay. It burned to the ground. Wow. They rebuilt several times, like, what?

I had it on. Oh, okay. Things like that. It really never returned to this, you know, it's glory day, this therapeutic state of care that was established under gold.

So it then burnt down again at some point. There's a multiple fires, the whole thing. Was it somebody starting the fire? No, I think this was just bad building.

Yeah. So yeah, there were a lot of fires. In the late 1960s, the hospital was actually moved in 1972. Archaeologist excavated the hospital's original foundation, which still bore signs of the big fire in 1885.

Wow. Reconstruction was approved in 1979 and the hospital site reopened as a museum in 1985. Well, I like that. So I've been into the museum.

It's so freaking cool. Really? I want to go to Columbia Williamsburg. Okay, please don't hurt me.

You're just really aggressive when you say that. I get it. But how far is that, by the way? That's not far.

That's for sure. Well, yes. I just want to know how far I'm driving. I get that you're super excited and you may hurt me if I don't go.

So nice. It's about six and a half hours. It's a long feature. It's a long feature.

But it's kind of worth it. So visitors today can kind of wander it through. They've recreated the cells. Like they really like recreated all this.

You can see tools and devices. How much does this cost? I don't remember. I was going to get up on the internet.

You can see the tools and devices that were used to treat patients. There's the tranquilizer chair. Do you know about this? The tranquilizer chair.

It was developed by Dr. Benjamin Rush of Philadelphia, who many people consider to be the father of American psychiatry. He believed madness was an arterial disease and ordered treatments such as the laxatives, hot and cold showers, bloodletting, which was all aimed at affecting blood circulation. The tranquilizer chair was kind of considered to be the step forward in treatment because violent patients were only placed in the restraining device for a limited time.

So from what I can understand about this, it's literally like they were just strapped to it, this chair, and so tight that you couldn't move. So it was like this right jacket, but in a chair, but a chair version. So that's what it was. So another weird thing.

The hospital frequently used unmarked graves to dispose of patients when they passed away. That's very kind of which was a common practice at the time. The E-C-R-A hospital does however maintain a record of the patients and you kind of what they were admitted for, which is really cool to look at. I'm sure they're like simple things.

Oh, it's crazy. Didn't respect our husband. They have put up four granite slabs that have patients names etched into them, and there's a fifth one that just kind of holds this memorial reading, this passage, and it says, we are rexist monument memory of those persons whom we have known, loved, and served for the years. While living, they knew the suffering of inner pain, confusion, and despair.

Now they are at peace in the hands of God, we're in a torment and we'll ever touch them again. Wow, which was kind of profound. That's kind of nice. It is nice.

It's a little creepy, but also like nice. I like it, yeah. Yeah. So today, East from State Hospital really, you know, continues on.

It's owned by, it's owned by William & Mary College now in Virginia. They own this hospital. The hospital offers community focused mental health treatment. They have two patient care buildings on 500 acres.

They have a staff now of over 900 people that care for 300 patients. Wow. So that staff too, patient ratio is very nice. Yes, definitely.

So this is, yeah, and they're kind of leading hospital now. It will be a teaching. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I teach a lot.

But yeah, that is the first mental health facility. So probably super haunted area. It's super haunted. I couldn't get a lot of really solid ghost stories.

Yeah. So I didn't want to like speculate, but I have been to the museum and wandered around and seen all of the things. Like it's really, it is very like a haunting experience. It's really, really cool.

So that's how I felt when I went to Appomattox and there's a giant spider behind me. It was always on the wall. Yeah. Where in my son's playroom?

But yeah, when I was in Appomattox, it was just this overwhelming sense that they were there. Yeah. Somebody was there. Yeah.

And you could feel them. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. That's really weird. And when you can feel the emotions of other people, like those who are past, you know, like the of the area, the place, it's just really heavy. Yeah.

Sure. Why not? It's really, really cool. If you haven't been.

Definitely recommend your mom can watch my son. Yeah. It plans for your mother. Yes.