Nearly two decades after it closed, the South Carolina State Hospital continues to hold a palpable mystique in Columbia and throughout the state. Founded in 182

This biography of an early twentieth-century South Carolina doctor sheds light on his pioneering work with the mentally ill to combat a public health scourge. T

"Whew! They going to send around here and tie you up and drag you off to Milledgeville. Them fat blue police chasing tomcats around alleys." —Berenice in The

The Worcester State Hospital offered a novel and compelling promise: that insanity could be cured by humane treatment in a therapeutic setting. Patients would e

On the outskirts of Havana lies Mazorra, an asylum known to--and at times feared by--ordinary Cubans for over a century. Since its founding in 1857, the island'