Word: ward
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...women patients in ward 37 at New York's St. Lawrence State Hospital, overlooking the seaway then abuilding, were all agitated and ill at ease, and one was frantic. A housemaid from Alabama by way of Chicago, she rushed up to the nurse supervisor, shouting: "Mrs. Holmes has gone crazy-crazier than we are-she won't lock the door!" As a matter of fact, Attendant Irene Holmes was doing just what the doctor ordered. First, the doors of individual wards, then of whole buildings, were being unlocked and left unlocked for lengthening periods up to twelve hours...
...unwonted freedom seemed also unwanted. Patients like Housemaid Anna, who had been in the hospital for ten years, did not know what to make of it. One man had devoted most of his waking hours during 20 locked-up years to testing every door on his ward, trying to get out: when he found them all unlocked, he refused to leave, for fear that he would not be able to get in again. It took him two weeks to get used to the return of freedom...
...guarded to prevent escapes. An attending doctor or nurse had to go through what Dr. Herman B. Snow, director at St. Lawrence, calls "the ritual of the key" to enter a building. Then, jangling a fistful of hardware, he had to repeat the ritual at the door of every ward, at every staircase and elevator. That this security fetish is an illusion is shown by St. Lawrence's experience: it never had many escapes compared with most hospitals, but now has only half as many as previously...
...taken away (the patients might swallow them or drop them down the toilets). Men could not shave themselves. Bathrooms were locked, and patients could not go to them unattended. Knives and forks were banned from the dining halls, so patients had to eat with spoons. No smoking was allowed. Ward windows were barred and curtainless. There were no mirrors, no flower vases, no plant pots, no bottles, no water glasses...
...keeping house. In addition, however, Mrs. Bundy has found time to get over to the Radcliffe library to study Spanish in preparation for a trip to South America which she and her husband will be making, to work actively for the C.C.A., to serve as a member of a ward committee, and to help with the newcomer teas...