Word: ward
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Obviously gearing his address to a university audience, variously quoted James B. Conant, Woodrow Wilson, Artemus Ward, Matthew Hale, John Randolph of Roanoke, Francis Bacon, Cardozo, Justice Holmes, and Gilbert & Sullivan...
Noise in the Sky. At St. Lawrence, soon after one of the wards was unlocked, one patient returned leading another, who was limping. The explanation: "We heard a noise in the sky. We had heard of airplanes, but could never see one from the closed ward. We got so excited looking at this one that we didn't look where we were going, and Amy fell down." A man kept going to the parking lots, sitting in unlocked cars. Eventually, he broke a silence of years to explain: he could not imagine how a car would work without...
...striking feature at St. Lawrence, which is now 100% open, and in varying degrees at all New York's other state hospitals (average: 66% open), is the transformation of the wards. Gone are the dreary wooden benches, where patients dressed in Mother Hubbards (when they were not undressing themselves) sat listless, sometimes in their own excrement. Instead there is modern, comfortable furniture. Windows, no longer barred, have gay curtains or draperies with drawstrings. Instead of glaring ceiling lights, there are bridge and table lamps. Glass vases hold cut flowers. Plant stands are loaded with potted violets. Glass tumblers...
Patients carry matches and lighters, wear wristwatches. Only rings of exceptional value are locked up for safety's sake. Women use knives freely when cooking in individual ward kitchens, are allowed scissors for sewing. They use electric washing machines, dryers and irons. Men shave themselves in the ward barber shop (though attendants change blades in safety razors), and have full access to cutting and gouging tools in the craft shop. If anything, says Dr. Snow, there are fewer accidents and fewer suicide attempts nowadays...
...open door on the second-floor psychiatric ward of this old (1908) building does not mean freedom to walk in and out at will-any more than a patient in the adjoining medical or surgical wards can do so. But nobody is restricted because of mental illness alone: he must show definite signs of disturbance. When he does, the patients (at daily meetings) are usually the first to complain of it, vote to restrict him "behind the clock" (on the boundary wall between ward and corridor). It is by the patients' own decision that razor blades and pointed knives...