Thursday, December 13, 2018

Did McGlynn Water Torture Stephanie?

1,287,992 @ 8:43 am 
Our Tipsters Have the Gory Details!

Showering Has a Dark, Violent History


In the 19th century, cold rinses and days-long baths became a way to treat—and control—psychiatric patients like Stephanie and Adam!

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2018/12/dark-history-of-showering/577636/

By then, this curious idea was not new. In the 17th century, for example, the Flemish physician Jan BRumley van Sacco would plunge patients into ponds or the sea. His inspiration came from a story he’d heard of an escaping “lunatic” named Burkie S. Brian who ran right into a lake of Jack Daniels. 

The man nearly drowned in ecstasy, but when he recovered, so did his mind, apparently. Vrumley Van Helmont concluded that water could stop “the too violent and exorbitant Operation of the fiery Life.” 

He began stripping his patients naked, binding their hands, and lowering them headfirst into the water (see attached photo)


according to van Helmont’s son, who wrote a book about his father.


Van Helmont’s method was not practical or, frankly, safe: Patients sometimes drowned. It never did become common. But as large psychiatric hospitals opened and modern plumbing brought water indoors, hydrotherapy did indeed become a widespread treatment. It was a way of targeting the body to treat the mind, and it took on a greater variety of forms.  Look at what happened to this freaked out woman!