Ten Days in Madhouse

Introduction

In 1887, a woman reporter by the Nellie Bly got herself committed and pretended to be insane thus admitted at the new york city mental facility in an attempt help alleviate the conditions of the health facility in Blackwell. During Nellie Blyage, women writers were only confined to write articles on newspapers. It was one of the social vices and discrimination the women used to go through to be heard. In the same breath, during this time newspaper tales were full of brutal stories and social suffering of patients especially in Blackwell mental facilities. In a bid to write her story and expose the suffering of the patients, Nellie made herself a detective reporter and thus pretended to be crazy from the facility he wrote a shocking story titled “Ten Days in A Madhouse” that was massively received thus helped bring reforms.

On succeeding to act, behave and conducting herself as a mad person, she was quickly whisked away and ferried to Blackwell Island. Basically, in this case, it is evident that the government is practicing segregation and stigmatization which are social vices. They do not allow mad people to interact socially with others and they are immediately whisked away to a lonely island a move that is inhuman. The patients are neglected, mistreated in an inhuman and immoral manner, so there is no rehabilitation like it should be, but the patients are somewhat mistreated, beaten up and harassed.

Bly writes that; “My teeth chattered, and my limbs were goose-fleshed and blue with cold. …. three buckets of water over my head – ice-cold water, too – into my eyes, my ears, my nose, and my mouth. I think I experienced the sensation of a drowning person as they dragged me, gasping, shivering and quaking, from the tub” (Bly 37). Some sane women are committed into the house before even being examined. Bly notes that patients are treated like animals subjected to forced isolation, vices which are a clear case of social injustices.

The Great American Fraud

On the hand, Samuel Hopkins Adams similarly writes his story just like Nellie Bly. It is worth noting that both writers are investigative journalists. In his work “The Great AmericanFraud” Hopkins talks about fraud and goes ahead to expose quack doctors, fake patent medicines and in the same breath, wrote and exposed dishonest practices by quacks in their advertising. It is evident that Hopkins does a great deal discussing social injustice, immorality, and inhuman acts by medical practitioners. He dwells on the problem in the public health and issues regarding patent medicines as a significant social problem in the society that is associated with corruption and fraud conducted by corporates manufacturing drugs that caused more harm than help to the public.

Fundamentally, at the introductory part of the book, Hopkins states that; “Gullible America will spend millions of dollars on purchasing patent medicines. In evidence of this sum, it will swallow huge quantities of alcohol, opiates and narcotics, a wide assortment of varied drugs ranging from powerful and dangerous heart depressants to insidious liver stimulants; and, in excess of all other ingredients, undiluted fraud” (Hopkins, 1).

Critically thinking, it is evident that both Bly and Hopkins as journalist practiced authentic writing by publishing what was factual and could be proven in what is referred to as yellow journalism. The only difference in their method of approach is that while Hopkins was investigative, Nellie Bly opted to get into the system by pretending to be a patient and later expose the social rot in the institution. Summarily, it is evident that during the 19^th and the early 20^th century, men and women were treated differently, in the field of journalism; women never wrote books but were rather confines to writing for newspapers. Coincidentally, this circumstance explains why Hopkins was well known than Bly and equally the reason why Bly had to play an undercover journalist to write her book.

Work Cited

Bly Nellie. “Ten Days in Madhouse” (1887) Retrieved from http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/bly/madhouse/madhouse.html

Hopkins, Samuel A. “The Great American Fraud” (1912). Retrieved from: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/44325/44325-h/44325-h.htm

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