Category:
Mental Health and Insanity

Anne Carroll Moore and her Doll Nicholas

The famous children's librarian Anne Carroll Moore was wont to tote around a doll named Nicholas and make people interact with it.



She eventually wrote a whole book (300+ pages) about Nicholas: Nicholas: A Manhattan Christmas Story.

You can read the book here.

I have tried in vain to find a real photo of Nicholas. However, here is his depiction from the book.



Posted By: Paul - Tue Mar 05, 2024 - Comments (0)
Category: Books, Libraries, 1920s, Dolls and Stuffed Animals, Mental Health and Insanity

Deranged Robot



A 'mentally disturbed' robot at the World Fair in San Diego, 1935/36. A robot provides entertainment at the California Pacific Exposition in San Diego, [but] instead of giving the planned speech, it suddenly began to speak in a boisterous cabaret voice and afterwards emitted the sounds of an orchestra. After a little bewilderment the cause for this 'mental confusion' was discovered: due to a circuit error, the robot had transmitted the program of the exhibition's broadcast station. The photo shows the robot during a thorough inspection of its speech organs and its circuits.

Posted By: Paul - Fri Feb 02, 2024 - Comments (0)
Category: Robots, Expositions, World Fairs, Celebrations, 1930s, Mental Health and Insanity

The Opal

Read it here. Spoiler: it's all very bland.

Posted By: Paul - Sat Sep 30, 2023 - Comments (2)
Category: Literature, Magazines, Nineteenth Century, Mental Health and Insanity

Solacen lightens the load of worry

I'd worry too if I had a giant crow standing behind me.

Circa 1967. Reproduced in The
Medical Runaround (1973) by Andrew Malleson.

Posted By: Alex - Wed Sep 13, 2023 - Comments (2)
Category: Advertising, 1960s, Mental Health and Insanity

Curing insane women by beauty treatments

I doubt this actually cured anyone, but as the article notes, it was certainly an improvement on the old way of treating mental illness.

None of the experts who have worked out these remarkable experiments in mental hygiene is particularly interested in the mere appearance of his patients. It is worth no money to the State of Illinois or to the County of Essex to make its insane wards look pretty. Were that the only object the beauty parlors would not be there. That they are there, and that other insane hospitals propose to install equivalents, is proof of the fact that the beauty parlor and what it stands for have definite value in aiding the cure of insanity. . .

Rouge, powder, lipsticks, eyebrow pencils and all the other implements of artificial beauty are provided, so that the women can make up to their heart's content, regardless of the somewhat weird results sometimes obtained... It is a part of the system to let the "customer" direct her own beautification as much as is possible.





Pittsburgh Sun Telegraph - July 14, 1929
Click to Enlarge

Posted By: Alex - Tue Feb 14, 2023 - Comments (3)
Category: Beauty, Ugliness and Other Aesthetic Issues, 1920s, Mental Health and Insanity

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Who We Are
Alex Boese
Alex is the creator and curator of the Museum of Hoaxes. He's also the author of various weird, non-fiction, science-themed books such as Elephants on Acid and Psychedelic Apes.

Paul Di Filippo
Paul has been paid to put weird ideas into fictional form for over thirty years, in his career as a noted science fiction writer. He has recently begun blogging on many curious topics with three fellow writers at The Inferior 4+1.

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