What comes to mind when you hear the words “mental asylum”? Do terms like moody, crazy, scary, or even haunted come to mind? This is most likely the terminology most of us would use to describe our perception of mental asylums. However, those in history who longed to treat the mentally ill compassionately and humanely had a different point of view. Asylums were known for their horrendous treatment of the mentally ill, but the ultimate goal of asylum reform in the nineteenth century was to improve the treatment of the mentally ill by providing them with a humane and caring environment in which to reside. in the first asylums the patients were treated very inhumanely. Some of the treatments patients had to undergo were extremely painful and evil. Asylums were actually prisons and not treatment centers. The inmates were chained and the rooms were dark and dirty dungeons. Patients were treated like animals, not humans (Gray). Danvers, an asylum in Boston, Massachusetts, was the birthplace of the procedure known as lobotomy (Taylor). Dr. Walter Freeman studied lobotomy and was the first to practice the procedure. The lobotomy began with an electric shock to the forehead. Then the eyelids were folded back and an ice pick was used to sever the frontal lobes. The patient reportedly had black eyes after this terrible procedure. This was supposed to cure a madman ("YouTube"). Diane Gray clarified her view on early treatment in asylums: "Another early treatment was the branding of a patient's head with a red-hot iron to 'bring the animal to its senses.' An early English treatment 19th century involved the use of a rotating device in the center of the paper. othea Taylor, Jeremy. "The most famous and infamous asylums in history - Asylum.com." about sex, dating, food and gadgets. April 09, 2011. This website was great. It had a lot of information about mental hospitals. Viney, Wayne 2011. This site was very important for my article. It gave me a lot of information about Dorothea Dix. "YouTube - Lobotomy - PBS Documentary." YouTube: broadcast yourself. 09 April 2011 documentary was very helpful. I only used it to learn about lobotomy, but it was easy to understand.