Worked to the bone: the biomechanical consequences of ‘labor therapy’ at a nineteenth century asylum

doi:10.1017/CBO9780511542534.007

6 - Worked to the bone: the biomechanical consequences of ‘labor therapy’ at a nineteenth century asylum

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 August 2009

Shawn M. Phillips

Edited by

D. Ann Herring and

Alan C. Swedlund

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Shawn M. Phillips: Affiliation:
Department of Geography, Geology, and Anthropology, Holmstedt Hall 001-A, Indiana State University, Terre Haute, IN 47809, USA
D. Ann Herring: Affiliation:
McMaster University, Ontario
Alan C. Swedlund: Affiliation:
University of Massachusetts, Amherst

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Summary

Introduction

During the nineteenth century in North America, the erection of custodial institutions, such as prisons and asylums for the mentally ill, initiated a legacy of long-term inmate care, structured around social and medical philosophy, which has persisted to the present day (Dwyer 1987; Foucault 1965; Grob 1994; Phillips 2001; Rothman 1995). The historiography of those institutions demonstrates that inmates were viewed as social deviants and potentially threatening to the fabric of society. As such, the purpose of the emergent nineteenth-century institutions, from prisons to asylums, was to attempt to reform the inmates for possible return to mainstream society. In this effort, inmates' lives were structured around contemporary medical and sociological concepts of normalcy (Dwyer 1987; Ferguson 1994; Rothman 1995). In the attempt to institute normalcy, asylum superintendents hoped to shepherd inmates' habits away from deviant behaviors and within the sphere of normalcy. In this atmosphere, inmates of long-term custodial institutions were exposed to regimens established to bring about normalcy, in many cases, for their entire adult lives. The aim of this study is to examine some of the biological consequences, in the skeletal record, to inmates of long-term custodial institutions who were exposed to socially and medically prescribed regimens. Some basic questions this study poses include: How can the skeletal record be utilized to test hypotheses generated from the historical record? Since institutional inmates were virtually a voiceless group, how can we recover their day-to-day experiences?

Type: Chapter
Information: Human Biologists in the Archives
Demography, Health, Nutrition and Genetics in Historical Populations
, pp. 96 - 129

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511542534.007 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2002

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