These harrowing photos look inside mental asylums of the 19th and 20th centuries and reveal just how disturbing their conditions once were.

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Share it: Email And if you liked this post, be sure to check out these popular posts: 37 Haunting Portraits Of 19th Century Mental Asylum Patients 25 Haunting Photos Of Life Inside New York's Tenements Inside Philadelphia's Byberry Mental Hospital House Of Horrors 1 of 45 A patient sits inside Ohio's Cleveland State Mental Hospital in 1946. Mary Delaney Cooke/Corbis via Getty Images 2 of 45 A patient sits in a restraint chair at the West Riding Lunatic Asylum in Wakefield, England in 1869. Wellcome Library, London 3 of 45 Child patients sit bound and tied to a radiator inside the psychiatric hospital at Deir el Qamar, Lebanon in 1982. José Nicolas/Corbis via Getty Images 4 of 45 A patient sleeps on a thin mattress on the floor of an otherwise bare room in Ohio's Cleveland State Mental Hospital in 1946. Jerry Cooke/Pix Inc./The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images 5 of 45 A patient sits alone in a dark room inside Ohio's Cleveland State Mental Hospital on February 3, 1955. Jerry Cooke/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images 6 of 45 A hungry boy stands alone and eats with his hands as other boys sit together under a blanket on a bed beside a small wood-burning stove at a hospital for mentally-handicapped children in Kavaja, Albania in March 1992. Peter Turnley/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images 7 of 45 A psychiatric patient poses for a photo at Paris' Salpêtrière Hospital circa 1876-1877. Wellcome Library, London 8 of 45 A child patient sits inside Normansfield Hospital in Teddington, England on February 12, 1979. John Minihan/Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty Images 9 of 45 A patient at a mental hospital undergoes electroshock treatment in 1956. Thurston Hopkins/Picture Post/Getty Images 10 of 45 Patients sit inside Ohio's Cleveland State Mental Hospital in 1946. Mary Delaney Cooke/Corbis via Getty Images 11 of 45 Workers restrain a patient at a hospital in Moscow, Russia on February 19, 1992. Peter Turnley/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images 12 of 45 A patient suffering from "general paralysis" poses for a photo at the West Riding Lunatic Asylum in Wakefield, England circa 1869. Wellcome Library, London 13 of 45 On March 29, 1950, at Philadelphia's Bella Vista Sanitorium, a fire killed nine patients, five of whom had been chained to concrete slabs like the one pictured. Bettmann/Contributor/Getty Images 14 of 45 A nurse tests out electronic equipment designed to monitor various patient data at a psychiatric hospital in Toronto on March 12, 1964. Mario Geo/Toronto Star via Getty Images 15 of 45 Pioneering and prolific lobotomist Dr. Walter Freeman performs a lobotomy with an instrument similar to an ice pick at Western State Hospital in Lakewood, Washington on July 11, 1949. Bettmann/Contributor/Getty Images 16 of 45 One of Walter Freeman’s lobotomy patients ten days after the procedure. 1942. Historical Medical Library of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia 17 of 45 A young patient's rotted teeth, due to poor dentistry, are revealed at London's Friern Hospital (previously known as the Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum) circa 1890-1910. Wellcome Library, London 18 of 45 A patient lies on the floor of Ohio's Cleveland State Mental Hospital in 1946. Mary Delaney Cooke/Corbis via Getty Images 19 of 45 Patients go about their day inside Ohio's Cleveland State Mental Hospital in 1946. Mary Delaney Cooke/Corbis via Getty Images 20 of 45 A patient stands in a straightjacket inside Ohio's Cleveland State Mental Hospital in 1946. Mary Delaney Cooke/Corbis via Getty Images 21 of 45 A psychiatric patient poses for a photo at Paris' Salpêtrière Hospital circa 1876-1877. Wellcome Library, London 22 of 45 Nurses hold down a patient receiving electroshock treatment at a facility in England on November 23, 1946. Kurt Hutton/Picture Post/Getty Images 23 of 45 A surgeon uses a brace and bit to drill into a patient's skull before performing a lobotomy at a mental hospital in England, November 1946. Kurt Hutton/Picture Post/Hulton Archive/Getty Images 24 of 45 Doctors test a new method of using radio waves to treat psychiatric patients at a hospital in Paris on May 13, 1938. Bettmann/Contributor/Getty Images 25 of 45 Two patients rest in the sleeping area of Ohio's Cleveland State Mental Hospital in 1946. Mary Delaney Cooke/Corbis via Getty Images 26 of 45 Patients at the Riul Vadului Mental Asylum in Romania huddle together in an unheated room in the middle of winter. Date unspecified. ANDREW HOLBROOKE/Corbis via Getty Images 27 of 45 Dr. James G. Shanklin administers electric shock and anesthesia in preparation for Dr. Walter Freeman to demonstrate his new transorbital lobotomy procedure at Western State hospital in Lakewood, Washington on July 11, 1949. Bettmann/Contributor/Western State Hospital 28 of 45 A prisoner sits inside the West Riding Lunatic Asylum in Wakefield, England in 1869. Wellcome Library, London 29 of 45 Patients lie on a bed inside a psychiatric hospital in Bucharest, Romania. Date unspecified. Bernard Bisson/Sygma via Getty Images 30 of 45 A guard at Vacaville State Prison prepares a prisoner for a lobotomy in 1961. The warden of Vacaville at that time was Dr. William Keating, a psychiatrist who was convinced that "criminality" was lodged in certain areas of the brain, and so lobotomies at Vacaville became routine. © Ted Streshinsky/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images 31 of 45 Child patients sit in their room at a mental hospital in Ursberg, Germany circa 1934-1936. Wolfgang Weber/ullstein bild via Getty Images 32 of 45 A patient lies back in a Bergonic chair, an early electroshock treatment apparatus, circa World War I. Otis Historical Archives National Museum of Health and Medicine 33 of 45 Dr. James Watts (left) and Dr. Walter Freeman examine a patient after lobotomy. Date unspecified. George Washington University 34 of 45 A young patient's rotted teeth, due to poor dentistry, are revealed at London's Friern Hospital (previously known as the Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum) circa 1890-1910. Wellcome Library, London 35 of 45 An amputee psychiatric patient of London's Friern Hospital (previously known as the Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum) poses for a photo circa 1890-1910. Wellcome Library, London 36 of 45 A British patient identified only as "Mary C" poses for a photo following her lobotomy. October 28, 1960. M. Winn/Daily Express/Getty Images 37 of 45 Ties bind a patient's feet to a bed at a mental hospital in Bucharest, Romania. Date unspecified. Bernard Bisson/Sygma via Getty Images 38 of 45 Patients sit inside Ohio's Cleveland State Mental Hospital in 1946. Mary Delaney Cooke/Corbis via Getty Images 39 of 45 Orderlies wash patients at the Long Grove Asylum in Epsom, England circa 1930. Wellcome Library, London 40 of 45 Orphans share a feces-stained crib at the Riul Vadului Mental Asylum in Romania. Date unspecified. ANDREW HOLBROOKE/Corbis via Getty Images 41 of 45 A patient diagnosed with "hysteria-induced narcolepsy" lies strapped down to a bed in Paris' Salpêtrière Hospital in 1889. Wellcome Library, London 42 of 45 A policeman stands guard at the bars of the ward for psychiatric patients (possibly the "criminal insane," per original annotation) at New York's Bellevue Hospital circa 1885-1898. Wellcome Library, London 43 of 45 Debris litters the floor at Maryland's Crownsville State Hospital psychiatric hospital (formerly Hospital for the Negro Insane of Maryland) during the aftermath of a riot in 1949. Afro American Newspapers/Gado/Getty Images 44 of 45 A patient lies in bed at Ohio's Cleveland State Mental Hospital in 1946. Mary Delaney Cooke/Corbis via Getty Images 45 of 45 Like this gallery?

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Haunting Photos Taken Inside Mental Asylums Of Decades Past View Gallery

"The degree of civilization in a society," goes Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky's deathless phrase, "can be judged by entering its prisons." But perhaps that phrase also applies to another class of institutions meant to house those deemed unfit for society: mental asylums.

And for centuries — right up until the present day, in some places — the quality of most mental asylums, at least those in the European tradition, revealed little degree of civilization at all.

It wasn't until the very end of the 18th century that just a few doctors in France and England, including Philippe Pinel and William Tuke, first brought forth the then-revolutionary notion of doing away with chains and corporal punishment.

It wasn't until England's Lunacy Act of 1845 that a government first officially designated the mentally ill as actual patients in need of treatment.

And it wasn't until the middle of the 19th century that France, England, and the United States first established public, state-run asylums with government oversight and committees in place to investigate abuses — the full extent of which will never be truly known.

Of course, abuse, neglect, and mistreatment inside mental asylums hardly ended in the middle of the 19th century — on the contrary. While facilities for the mentally ill had now become institutionalized, the late 19th and 20th centuries brought many new problems.

For one, the growth of psychiatry as a discipline meant more diagnoses and thus patients to fit into facilities that were growing ever more overcrowded. Likewise, the growth of psychiatry meant more doctors developing more procedures that seemed increasingly radical throughout the early and mid-20th century, which gave us electroshock therapy and the lobotomy, among others.

At the same time, the rise of fascism and totalitarianism in Europe gave rise to a wave of politically-motivated abuses in mental asylums, with powerful regimes including those in Nazi Germany, the Soviet Bloc, and apartheid-era South Africa summarily institutionalizing suspected enemies of the state and/or creating eugenics programs to weed out those who truly were mentally ill.

But even in cases not nearly so extreme, even in the garden-variety mental asylums (a term itself that has now fallen out of favor) of 20th century Europe and America, the institutional conditions were often startling by today's standards: lobotomies performed with repurposed ice picks, patients chained to concrete slabs, children in straight jackets tied to radiators, and worse.

Let the harrowing photos above return you to a comparatively benighted era in psychiatric care — one that wasn't actually all that long ago.

Next, see 37 haunting portraits of life inside Victorian mental asylums. Then, step inside one of the most infamous mental asylums of all time with this look at Bethlem Royal Hospital, more commonly known as "Bedlam."