125 Reasons You Could End Up in a Lunatic Asylum in the 19th Century

Reasons for admission into the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in West Virginia from 1864 to 1889 included laziness, egotism, disappointed love, female disease, mental excitement, cold, snuff, greediness, imaginary female trouble, “gathering in the head,” exposure and quackery, jealousy, religion, asthma, masturbation, and bad habits. Spouses used lunacy laws to rid themselves of their partners and in abducting their children.

The diseases attributed to those admitted to the hospital from its opening in 1864 through 1880 were varied, with the most common being 304 patients with chronic dementia, 254 with acute mania, 225 with melancholia, and 165 with chronic mania. Listings were given of the supposed causes of the diseases, and they were labeled supposed causes, with the physicians of the time feeling “a little unease with them,” they still published them. Most common at Weston were the 359 who were “not assigned” a cause, and “heredity,” and “epilepsy” ranked next. Forty to fifty patients were attributed each of the following causes: “intemperance,” “ill health,” “menstrual,” “traumatic injury,” and “masturbation.” One honest man was listed with “masturbation for 30 years.”

REASONS FOR ADMISSION
WEST VIRGINIA HOSPITAL FOR THE INSANE (WESTON)
OCTOBER 22, 1864 to DECEMBER 12, 1889

1. Amenorrhea
2. Asthma
3. Bad company
4. Bad habits & political excitement
5. Bad whiskey
6. Bite of a rattle snake
7. Bloody flux
8. Brain fever
9. Business nerves
10. Carbonic acid gas
11. Carbuncle
12. Cerebral softening
13. Cold
14. Congestion of brain
15. Constitutional
16. Crime
17. Death of sons in the war
18. Decoyed into the army
19. Deranged masturbation
20. Desertion by husband
21. Diphtheria
22. Disappointed affection
23. Disappointed love
24. Disappointment
25. Dissipation of nerves
26. Dissolute habits
27. Dog bite
28. Domestic affliction
29. Domestic trouble
30. Doubt about mother’s ancestors
31. Dropsy
32. Effusion on the brain
33. Egotism
34. Epileptic fits
35. Excessive sexual abuse
36. Excitement as officer
37. Explosion of shell nearby
38. Exposure & hereditary
39. Exposure & quackery
40. Exposure in army
41. Fall from horse
42. False confinement
43. Feebleness of intellect
44. Fell from horse
45. Female disease
46. Fever
47. Fever & loss of law suit
48. Fever & nerved
49. Fighting fire
50. Fits & desertion of husband
51. Gastritis
52. Gathering in the head
53. Greediness
54. Grief
55. Gunshot wound
56. Hard study
57. Hereditary predisposition
58. Ill treatment by husband
59. Imaginary female trouble
60. Immoral life
61. Imprisonment
62. Indigestion
63. Intemperance
64. Interference
65. Jealousy
66. Jealousy & religion
67. Kick of horse
68. Kicked in the head by a horse
69. Laziness
70. Liver and social disease
71. Loss of arm
72. Marriage of son
73. Masturbation & syphilis
74. Masturbation for 30 years
75. Medicine to prevent conception
76. Menstrual deranged
77. Mental excitement
78. Milk fever
79. Moral sanity
80. Novel reading
81. Nymphomania
82. Opium habit
83. Over action on the mind
84. Over heat
85. Over study of religion
86. Over taxing mental powers.
87. Parents were cousins
88. Pecuniary losses: worms
89. Periodical fits
90. Political excitement
91. Politics
92. Puerperal
93. Religious enthusiasm
94. Religious excitement
95. Remorse
96. Rumor of husband’s murder or desertion
97. Salvation army
98. Scarlatina
99. Seduction
100. Seduction & disappointment
101. Self abuse
102. Severe labor
103. Sexual abuse and stimulants
104. Sexual derangement
105. Shooting of daughter
106. Smallpox
107. Snuff
108. Snuff eating for two years
109. Softening of the brain
110. Spinal irritation
111. Sun stroke
112. Sunstroke
113. Superstition
114. Suppressed masturbation
115. Suppression of menses
116. Tabacco & masturbation: hysteria
117. The war
118. Time of life
119. Trouble
120. Uterine derangement
121. Venereal excesses
122. Vicious vices in early life
123. Women
124. Women trouble
125. Young lady & fear

According to Snopes, although this list is frequently posted as a joke, it is somewhat rooted in truth. The list was compiled from the log book of the West Virginia Hospital for the Insane, documenting admissions to that institution between 1864 and 1889 and has been published or referenced in several books and research papers. It has also been archived by the West Virginia Division of Culture and History.

The Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum (TALA) in the mountains of Weston, West Virginia, holds many dark and disturbing stories. Later known as the Weston State Hospital, TALA was a Kirkbride psychiatric hospital, constructed from 1858-1881 and in operation from 1864 until 1994. The main building is one of the largest hand-cut stone masonry buildings in the United States.

Although this list was sourced from a contemporaneous hospital log, its entries should not be considered as denoting things that were all considered symptoms of mental instability. Rather, among patients who were treated at West Virginia Hospital for the Insane for various illnesses such as chronic dementia, acute mania, and melancholia, these entries recorded the reasons or causes why those patients were said to have developed their underlying maladies. That is, people didn’t think that novel reading, asthma, the marriage of one’s child, politics, or falling from a horse were symptoms of mental illness, but rather factors that might have produced or exacerbated such an illness.