Despite the good intentions of its design and beginnings, Whittington, originally intended to treat three hundred patients, had a population of almost fifteen hundred by the twenties. The staff numbers, however, remained stable. This meant the patients were often severely neglected, becoming sick and filth-ridden from lack of care, and the staff was unequipped to offer them more. It wasn't uncommon for a patient to die and not be discovered for days, even weeks sometimes.
In 1915, Dr. Jeremiah Braun became the director of Whittington and instituted treatments that have been associated with the horrors of psychiatric facilities of the past: padded cells used for solitary confinement, mechanical restraints including straightjackets, the over-medicating of those difficult to control, insulin shock therapy, psychosurgery, and the lobotomy. The icepick lobotomy, which was essentially an icepick to the eggshell-thin bone above the eye, was a radically invasive brain surgery used to treat everything from delusions, to migraines, to melancholy, to deep depression, to "hysteria," a term used for women who exhibited sexual desire and strong emotions. In the unfortunate patient, the frontal lobes would be disconnected from the rest of the brain by a simple, quick side-to-side maneuver, leaving the individual with irreversible effects. In a 1941 interview, Braun described Whittington's mentally ill as docile and compliant under his direction, however, visitors to the facility told of patients wandering aimlessly in a daze, sometimes into walls, vacantly staring at their own feet, and hitting their heads repeatedly on tables with no intervention by staff.
Eventually, Braun's beliefs regarding mental illness became even more bizarre and dangerous. When he noted that very high fevers could cause hallucinations, he theorized that infection didn't just cause diseases of the body, but of the mind as well. In 1923, he began extracting patients' teeth, and often their tonsils as well, though X-rays didn't always confirm infection. When this didn't cure his patients, he began removing other body parts such as the stomach, portions of the colon, gall bladder, spleen, ovaries, testicles, and uteruses, although he had no formal training as a surgeon. Moreover, these surgeries were often performed without consent from the patient or family, and sometimes, despite their vehement protests. Braun sited cure rates of over 90%, but in actuality, his surgeries very often resulted in death. This, however, did not deter him from his "pioneering work." What made the practices of Braun more disturbing, was that he regularly published his findings in highly read psychological papers and medical journals. And no one in the psychology community did a thing. Braun passed away in 1962.
Sickened by what I'd just read, I skimmed down the article a little more and found that by 1988, all but one wing of Whittington was closed. The entire hospital had been shut down just five years ago.
I sat on the couch for a little while longer, staring at the screen. Swallowing down the lump in my throat, I closed the cover of my laptop. Jesus, it was a fucking house of horrors. Or it had been. Something about the fear and anguish of those who had been locked inside . . . I didn't want to dwell on it for very long, didn't want to consider the details.
But I suddenly had a deep curiosity to see it in person—to find out if the pictures online really did it justice. Mapping it out, I found that Brandon had been right. It was about five miles away and a straight walk through the woods.
It was only mid-morning. I gathered some supplies—food, water, a sweatshirt—and set off in the direction of Whittington. The terrain was deeply wooded for the most part, but there were no cliffs to scale or rivers to cross—thankfully—and it took me a little over three hours to make the walk through the misty forest. I called Lily's name intermittently, but received no answer.
I came out of the trees and was standing before what I recognized as Whittington, the gargantuan, gothic, stone building. My heart began to beat more quickly. It looked like a living, breathing thing and I shivered. Now that I was right in front of it, I couldn't help but imagine all the pain and unfathomable suffering that had gone on behind those walls. All because no one had been willing or brave enough to help. Those people had been invisible to society, deemed throwaways because of something they weren't responsible for. The weakest of the weak. And in that moment I felt the terror and hopelessness of that down to my bones, in my very marrow.
And yet, as I stood staring at it, tilting my head very slightly, it also exuded a strange sort of magnificent beauty, some hidden sorrow that lay just beneath the stone surface, as if the building itself wanted to say, what happened here was not my fault.