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Chapter Ten - Coggle Diagram
Chapter Ten
Retreat for the Insane
Started in 1821, and its goal was to remove mentally ill people from jails.
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Some people believed that insanity could be cured. Others thought it was incurable, but there were ways to make it more bearable with controlled surroundings
Instead of looking for cures, the main goal was to fund raise and the Asylum was often referenced as a point of success.
The distinction that the Asylum was a school and the Retreat was a hospital was not understood. Gallaudet named it the Retreat because the word Asylum was already taken.
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The Retreat sought out white, native-born, middle, and upper-class patients. They justified this by saying that the state wouldn't grant them money with clients that didn't fit that demographic.
The Retreat denied that insanity came from God. Others like Henry Barnard accepted that it was a disease like gout and is caused by natural causes. However, at the time, natural causes were considered freedom of thought and religion.
Most doctors accepted that religion wouldn't cure mental illness, but they figured Gallaudet's preaching was harmless and was fine for the patients to get a dose of religion in addition to their treatments.
In the End
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He didn't let this stop him for long, he went back to work, but he was working slower.
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Soohia came down with dysentery and that same day, he had violent chills. While it can be cured, a main treatment today is heavy hydration and letting the illness run its course, but back then, hydration was less understood.
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The first recorded instance of simultaneous interpreting occurred at the unveiling of Gallaudet's monument on Asylum grounds in 1854 (p. 243)
Gallaudet
Gallaudet preached at the Massetchusetts State Lunatic Hospital and was offered a full time postition that he procrastinated responding to as usual.
Henry Barnard was trying to convince Gallaudet to agree to be a secretary of the Board of Commissioners of Common School and he tried to make the position more infatuating by creating the part-time position for Gallaudet at the Retreat. The hope was that he would accept both positions.
Gallaudet took the part-time position, but not the secretary position, therefore, getting paid for the job with subsidized money without giving the people who subsidized it what they wanted in return.
He blamed mental illness on faulty religious education. He even convinced a patient that his illness was caused by neglecting his prayers.
Gallaudet would talk to the patients to alleviate their boredom and even taught them the finger alphabet and organized trips to the Asylum.
Gallaudet suggested a pluthera of activities to implentment at the Retreat such as sewing and knitting, putting reading materials in the rooms, lecturing on chemistry with hands on objects, etc.
When a patient tried to jump off of the roof when Gallaudet was with him, he responded by challenging the patient into going to the ground and trying to jump up.
There was a patient at the Retreat who was a former student of the Asylum who Gallaudet was not close with and some of that is traced to his tuition at the Asylum being paid by the state.
Gallaudet home-life
Gallaudet turned down yet another job, this one working as a superintendant at an orphanage with a sallary of $2,000
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He wrote about his kids in a personal diary and where they were in life at the time. He did not mention his eldest, Thomas.
Thomas wanted to study at Yale, but Gallaudet said he sad to stay under him home influence at Washington College. Gallaudet thought this college was safer, but he was wrong. Thomas converted and was confirmed in the Episcopal church.
Gallaudet charged Thomas $1,000 for his college expenses since he was unhappy with the turnout. This didn't change anything about Thomas, and in fact, made him even more set in his ways.
Gallaudet severely disapproved of his son's religious choices and when he got married to a girl, his family did not show up.
The Asylum
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The students presented Gallaudet and Clerc with gifts to thank them,
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Post Death
Gallaudet's sons were present at the second Conference on Education of the Deaf in Milan where sigh language was banned everywhere except Gallaudet college and segregated schools for black deaf children.
In 1960, William Stokoe published a study declaring that American Sign Language was a formal language.
Resedential schools began to close forcing deaf children ot be mainstreamed with less capable interpreters.