Museum looks back at history of psychiatric facility

LOGANSPORT, Ind. (AP) - Once, Logansport State Hospital had more than 2,500 patients. The psychiatric facility west of town had an agricultural operation that patients participated in. It offered electroconvulsive therapy. Nurses wore capes and orderlies wore white uniforms with bow ties. Parades were held on the grounds.

The hospital is recognizing those memories and more through the reopening of its recently relocated museum. Through its exhibition-filled rooms, Longcliff Museum tells the story of how a facility provided and continues to provide health care, work and education in the area for more than 127 years.

Brian Newell has been a librarian at Logansport State Hospital for more than two decades. He said it's important to maintain the museum "to honor the people who have worked here in the past and our history."

Many of those people are depicted in photographs hanging on the museum's walls, like the black-and-white pictures of the nursing classes that studied at the hospital.

Other rooms contain cabinets filled with old medical instruments and glass bottles labeled with chemical compounds.

One exhibit illustrates the hospital's former provision of electroconvulsive therapy. A mannequin lies on a table wearing electrodes on its temples connected to a machine covered in switches, dials and meters. A log rests nearby indicating more than 750 patients received the treatment in 1959 and 1960.

Artwork created by patients over the years hangs on the walls while bookshelves hold leather-bound record books dating back to the 1920s. A training tool in the shape of an arm once used to train medical professionals how to insert syringes is also on display.

Pictures and prose explaining rocking chair therapy are exhibited in the building's lobby. Dr. Joseph G. Roger championed the practice throughout his time as the hospital's first superintendent from 1888 to 1908.

"He was really an amazing man," Newell said of Roger. "He knew all the patients by name. He would sit in that rocking chair and rock with the most severely depressed patients."

A diorama containing a miniature, three-dimensional display of the way the hospital grounds appeared in the 1970s stretches across one of the museum's rooms. The campus's former greenhouses are visible within the glass case, a reminder of the agricultural operation the hospital once hosted. Diagrams mapping out crops of potatoes, cabbage, radishes and other vegetables are also available for perusing.

Farming continued at the hospital until the late 1960s, when it was terminated due to amendments made to the Fair Labor Standards Act that would have required patients to be paid for the form of work therapy.

Named after the extensive bluff the hospital stands on, Longcliff Museum opened in the hospital's Pathology Building in 1999. Because of repairs required in the Pathology Building, staff started moving the exhibitions in late 2014 to the Administrative Building, which has been in continuous use since 1888.

The hospital the museum celebrates was made possible by funding allocated by the Indiana General Assembly for a total of three regional mental health facilities. Lawmakers' goal was to ease overcrowding in the only facility in the state at the time, Central State Hospital.

Originally named Northern Indiana Hospital for the Insane, the facility was built on 281 acres to accommodate 366 patients. Its name was changed to Logansport State Hospital in 1927. During the fiscal year of 1953-1954, the hospital reached its largest capacity, with 2,558 patients. The hospital's patient population is currently less than 140.

Newell said his favorite piece of history at the hospital are films in the facility's library that recorded various events and happenings on the grounds. Part of the footage shows a parade proceeding down the campus's roadways.

"Just a really happening place and time," Newell said, watching the grainy footage.

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Source: (Logansport) Pharos-Tribune, http://bit.ly/1OG4YLP

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Information from: Pharos-Tribune, http://www.pharostribune.com