Dr. Benjamin Rush was a great man whose ideas were way ahead of his time. He believed in racial equality and female education. He pointed out the terrible effects of smoking and railed against hard liquor more than 200 years ago.
But his book on mental illness was a mishmash of good ideas and – viewed from today – pure nonsense.
Rush wanted to help his catatonic patients and their opposite - highly excited mental patients.
He felt bleeding and a heavy dose of laxatives helped both types of madness, but he had a unique invention that looked very much like a modern electric chair.
The patients was strapped in tightly. A hood device covered the head and the agitated, raving patient just sat there motionless until he calmed down.
This was Rush’s “tranquilizing chair.”
There was a similar chair to treat “torpid madness” or catatonic-types. This chair was called the “gyrator.” Again, the patient was strapped in but the chair could spin – round-and-round.
Rush felt the spinning chair would get blood up to the brain of the torpid patient, making the person more alert and active.
Neither chair used by Rush at Pennsylvania Hospital survives. But a good sketch of the device does survive.