2023-09-25 15:54:15
Among the most recommended (and controversial) treatments were “rest cures.” These consisted of total isolation for up to several months for women with “female disorders”, such as postpartum depression. Popularized in the 19e century by the American neurologist Silas Weir Mitchell, these intentionally punitive cures imposed weeks of bed rest without doing anything, not even reading or sewing. Patients were not allowed to see their friends and family and a rich diet was prescribed and sometimes forcefully given to them.
“The rest that I recommend [aux femmes malades] is not at all what they imagine,” wrote the neurologist. “Being in bed half the day and being able to sew and read a little, which is interesting and arouses compassion, is good, but when you ask [aux femmes] to lie down for a month, without reading, writing, or sewing, and having a nurse (who is not family), rest then becomes a bitter remedy for some patients, and they are happy when they are ordered to get up and go out.”
One of Silas Weir Mitchell’s patients, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, criticized his method in a semi-autobiographical short story regarding postpartum depression and rest cures published in 1892 and entitled The Sequestered.
“No one might believe what an effort it is to accomplish the little I am capable of,” writes the narrator of the story, before continuing: “this dear baby! It’s impossible for me to take care of it myself, it makes me too nervous.” Confined to her room by her doctor husband, the narrator ends up going crazy and imagines that she is a prisoner of the “repulsive” yellow paper in the room.
Today considered a classic of feminist literature, this work provoked strong reactions among its readers. “The aim was not to make people mad, but to keep them from falling into madness,” Charlotte Perkins Gilman later wrote, adding that her own rest treatment had brought her “so close to absolute mental ruin that[‘elle] back
1695684196
#Postpartum #depression #illness #Antiquity
