Here’s What Could Get You Committed If You Were a Woman in the 1870s

Many of things that got women committed in the 1870s would be considered normal behavior today. By Anabelle Bernard Fournier Despite all the effort made today to de-stigmatize mental illness, the history of mental health and its treatment isn’t pretty. Even as late as the 1970s, lobotomies were widely practiced in the United States to …

A handy history

Condemned, celebrated, shunned: masturbation has long been an uncomfortable fact of life. Why? by Barry Reay The anonymous author of the pamphlet Onania (1716) was very worried about masturbation. The ‘shameful vice’, the ‘solitary act of pleasure’, was something too terrible to even be described. The writer agreed with those ‘who are of the opinion, …