P 365 day 70: Visiting the mental ward

I went to the old psychiatric hospital in Helioo on a field trip yesterday. It was pretty neat, but I'm not sure I would really want to walk around there at night, but it was pretty cool to do during the day. Since Blogger is being really stupid, I'll try to describe everything in order the best I can.   

The first picture is a mannequin in a bath tub. Apparently they would grease up really crazy people and then keep them in warm bathtubs for days at end. I guess the idea was that a bath helps relieve stress, then a 5 day long bath should help relieve crazy.

This mannequin is waiting for his electric shock therapy to begin. It was supposed to help cure epilepsy. They reckoned that since epilepsy was an electrical malfunction in the brain, shooting electricity into the brain would help rewire epileptics. 

This was the work room (I'm not actually sure if they were really clumped together like this or not, I'm not sure the tour guide ever said, but only a small part was turned into a museum, the rest of the hospital is still in use by the mental health organisation, though it's no longer used as a mental hospital). in the foreground is the bakery section, then there are typewriters in the background. There was also a giant loom, a TV, a barbershop and a doctor's office section in the open room.

^^^^^^Here's the doctors' area, it looks really scary. This was were the mental patients would come if they were sick, but this is also where they would send homosexuals to be "cured" by castration. Great way to kill the urges I guess.... :s

To the right are clothes made out of paper. This isn't want the 'patients' wore day to day, this is what they were buried in when they died. The marble slab the clothes are sitting on was the exact table where autopsies were performed, in a small alcove off to the side of the big work room. like I said, I wouldn't want to go in there at night. To the left are paintings by the patients. Stupid Blogger turned the picture sideways and I can't turn it back around. :( Interesting look into the inner workings of the psychotic mind huh? Anyway, I have a ton more pictures, so if you would like to see more, please ask. You should be able to make these ones bigger just by clicking on them. We also got to see another part of the grounds that is now devoted to the archaeology of Heiloo, but I thought the mental hospital's museum was more interesting. If you would like to see those ones as well, just let me know and I'll post them.