Mental Health and Insanity
The Easy Woman: 1963
Original article here.
Posted By: Paul - Sun Jun 12, 2016 -
Comments (8)
Category: Sexuality, Stereotypes and Cliches, 1960s, Women, Mental Health and Insanity
The Electric Pencil
Sounds pretty much like prime fodder for WU-vies.
"Around the year 1910, a patient at State Lunatic Asylum No. 3 in Nevada, Missouri, who referred to himself as The Electric Pencil, executed 280 drawings in ink, pencil, crayon and colored pencil. These beautiful drawings of animals, people and buildings were executed on both sides of 140 ledger pages, each bearing the name of the hospital in official type across the top, thus dramatizing the interface of the institutional and the creative. The Electric Pencil's drawings were sewn into a handmade album of fabric and leather, which shortly afterwards was lost--for a century."
Posted By: Paul - Tue Mar 29, 2016 -
Comments (5)
Category: Cult Figures and Artifacts, Eccentrics, Books, Twentieth Century, Mental Health and Insanity
Keeping Mentally Fit
Is the narrator drunk? Of just folksy?
The lesson learned: look around you and you will probably spot a lunatic.
Posted By: Paul - Fri Sep 18, 2015 -
Comments (4)
Category: PSA’s, 1950s, Diseases, Mental Health and Insanity
Training For A Darwin Award
There's stupid, there's crazy, then there's THIS guy!
Posted By: Alex - Sat Aug 01, 2015 -
Comments (4)
Category: Can’t Possibly Be True, Mental Health and Insanity, Goofs and Screw-ups, Trains
Creepy 1948 ad for electro-shock therapy
Back in the 1940s, electro-shock therapy (or "electro-tonic therapy") was promoted as a breakthrough treatment for depression. But it never managed to live up to the hype and was eventually mostly replaced by chemical treatments (popping pills). Though, from what I understand, it's still used in certain situations.If the medical industry was promoting electro-shock therapy today, I imagine they'd show pictures of happy people running through fields and playing with grandchildren. But this 1948 ad (Time - Sep 20, 1948) offered a slightly more realistic and disturbing image.
Note the line: "Brain disclosed for illustration only." Glad they clarified that.
Posted By: Alex - Sat Jul 11, 2015 -
Comments (7)
Category: 1940s, Mental Health and Insanity
Montreal Madness of 1892
People acted weird in familiar NOTW fashion even over a century ago, as this Montreal newspaper reveals.
Posted By: Paul - Fri May 01, 2015 -
Comments (5)
Category: Emotions, Newspapers, Husbands, Wives, Nineteenth Century, Mental Health and Insanity
ABOUT D@%N TIME
France has enacted a law limiting excessively thin models from working until their BMI reaches a minimum level set forth in the law. Fines and even jail time can be leveled against fashion houses and modeling agents trying to use models that are thinner than the law allows. Its about time we quit letting vanity destroy our little girls.
Posted By: Alex - Sun Apr 05, 2015 -
Comments (13)
Category: Addictions, Eating, Design and Designers, Fashion, Food, Nutrition, Health, Disease, Mental Health and Insanity
Kusama: Princess of Polka Dots
Creator of the "penis chair," among other objects of art.
Posted By: Paul - Sat Feb 14, 2015 -
Comments (0)
Category: Art, Avant Garde, Pop Art, 1960s, Asia, Mental Health and Insanity
Art of the Insane
In early 1946, the St. Anne Insane Asylum in Paris exhibited some of the art work of its inmates. Collecting the art of people identified as insane seems to have been a trend at the time. See, for instance, the book of "Poetry of the Insane," published in 1933, that I posted about back in Feb 2013.The Associated Press caption on the top picture notes, "The writing is a miscellany of seemingly unconnected Gibberish, with no apparent relationship to the drawing."
Posted By: Alex - Fri Mar 21, 2014 -
Comments (4)
Category: Art, 1940s, Mental Health and Insanity
Fear of Phobias
You should be able to amuse and educate yourself for some time at the Phobia List site.
Here are some of my new favorites.
Fear of chickens: Alektorophobia.
Fear of dust: Amathophobia or Koniophobia.
Fear of nosebleeds: Epistaxiophobia.
Fear of virgins or young girls: Parthenophobia.
Posted By: Paul - Sun Dec 08, 2013 -
Comments (16)
Category: Mental Health and Insanity
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| 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. Contact Us |