List No. 058
REASONS FOR ADMISSION
West Virginia Hospital for the Insane
1864–1889
In 1858, building work began on what would eventually become the West Virginia Hospital for the Insane, a 250-capacity psychiatric hospital located on 269 acres of land in the city of Weston, West Virginia. Progress was slow due to a pause in construction brought on by the American Civil War, but six years later its doors finally opened and the first set of patients were admitted for care. The list seen here, published in 1993, details the official “reasons for admission” of the hospital’s patients between 1864 and 1889, as recorded in its logbook.
REASONS FOR ADMISSION
WEST VIRGINIA HOSPITAL FOR THE INSANE (WESTON)
OCTOBER 22, 1864 to DECEMBER 12, 1889
Amenorrhea
Asthma
Bad company
Bad habits & political Excitement
Bad whiskey
Bite of rattle snake
Bloody flux
Brain fever
Business nerves
Carbonic acid gas
Carbuncle
Cerebral softening
Cold
Congestion of brain
Constitutional
Death of sons in war
Decoyed into the army
Deranged masturbation
Desertion by husband
Diphtheria
Disappointed affection
Disappointed love
Disappointment
Dissipation of nerves
Dissolute habits
Dog bite
Domestic affliction
Domestic Trouble
Doubt about his mothers Ancestors
Dropsy
Effusion on the brain
Egotism
Epileptic fits
Excessive sexual abuse
Excitement as officer
Explosion of a shell nearby
Exposure and hereditary
Exposure and quackery
Exposure in Army
Fall from horse
False confinement
Feebleness of intellect
Fell from horse in war
Female disease
Fever and loss of law suit
Fever and Nerved
Fever and Jealousy
Fighting fire
Fits and desertion of husband
Gastritis
Gathering in the head
Greediness
Grief
Gunshot wound
Hard study
Hereditary predisposition
Hysteria
Ill treatment by husband
Imaginary female trouble
Immoral life
Imprisonment
Indigestion
Intemperance
Intemperance & business Trouble
Interference
Jealousy and religion
Kick of horse
Kicked in the head by a horse
Laziness
Liver and social disease
Loss of arm
Marriage of son
Masturbation & syphilis
Masturbation for 30 years
Medicine to prevent conception
Menstrual deranged
Mental excitement
Milk fever
Moral sanity
Novel reading
Nymphomania
Opium habit
Over action of the mind
Over heat
Over study of religion
Over taxing mental powers
Parents were cousins
Pecuniary losses
Periodical fits, tobacco & Masturbation
Political excitement
Politics
Puerperal
Religious enthusiasm
Religious Excitement
Remorse
Rumor of husband murder
Salvation Army
Scarlatina
Seduction
Seduction & disappointment
Self Abuse
Severe labor
Sexual abuse and stimulants
Sexual derangement
Shooting of daughter
Small pox
Snuff eating for 2 years
Softening of the brain
Spinal irritation
Sun stroke
Superstition
Suppressed masturbation
Suppression of menses
The War
Time of life
Trouble
Uterine derangement
Venereal Excesses
Vicious vices in early life
Women
Women trouble
