A visit to a Turkish Lunatic Asylum.

  • Davidson, John H.
Date:
1875
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A visit to a Turkish Lunatic Asylum. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    around them, in true Oriental fashion, their less accomplished fellow patients, and read aloud for their general edification. Whether insanity is on the increase in the East or not it is difficult to say. Some think that it is, hut do not attribute it to the development of civilization in the country. The causes, however, to which insanity is chiefly to be assigned in Turkey are, I believe, the increasing secret abuse of rahi, excessive indulgence in venery, esrar, and opium, but above all to the ravages of syphilis and tuberculosis. Religious excitement is also not an uncommon cause—chiefly amongst the dancing and howling Dervishes. As a few words regarding the management of the insane in Turkey in the sixteenth century may not be uninteresting, I shall now give an English precis of some information on the subject, collected by Dr. Mongeri from the archives of the mosque of Sultan Suleiman, and which he most kindly supplied me with :— In 1560 an asylum for the insane, bearing the name of the Suleimanie, was erected in the neighbourhood of the mosque just mentioned. Tt was richly endowed by its generous founder, and there was a numerous staff1 attached to it. The number of insane inmates was limited to twenty, and there were no less than 150 persons assigned to their service. This statement will doubtless appear fabulous, or at least an exaggeration, to all those who are not acquainted with the East, but it will only slightly surprise those who have an intimate knowledge of its manners and customs. The resident staff was composed of the Achdji-Bachi, or chief cook ; the Hamandji, or chief of the bath; the Tellah- Bachi, or chief of the cleaners; the Tomrouh-Aghassi, or chief of the dungeons; the Gullabi, or chief keeper; the Meidanji, or chief of the sweepers ; the Sacka-Bachi, or chief of the water carriers; and these had all under their orders troops of subalterns more or less numerous. The wages of the latter consisted of a daily allowance of bread and rice and a few paras of monthly pay. In the interior of the Asylum a large vapour bath was constructed, and here lay the principal duty of the TellaJes. This bath consisted of three chambers, heated to different degrees, and each con- tained a basin or reservoir of water. The rooms communi- cated with one another by very narrow doors, and there is still to be seen on the stone pavement the iron rings to which the patient was fastened in order to make him submit to the cleansing operation. The necessary ablutions being com- pleted, the patient was returned to the Gullabi, or to the