The unfulfilled project of the Model Mental Hospital in Spain: fifty years of the Santa Isabel Madhouse, Leganés (1851-1900).
The scant attention paid to the mentally ill by the Spanish Administration in the nineteenth century was reflected in the country's run-down and overcrowded mental hospitals. It was not until the reign of Isabel II (1843-1869) that Provincial Councils (Diputaciones) officially took responsibility for the insane. In 1851 the Santa Isabel Madhouse in Leganés (Madrid), was opened as a National Mental Hospital. Several projects attempted to classify it as "a model home for the disturbed". The aim of the paper is to offer new data on the first fifty years of the institution (1851-1900). Original manuscripts from the National Historical Archive (Madrid) and criticisms published in the press are discussed. Various plans to improve the old building - as well as requests for assistance from the institution to the Administration - were repeatedly unsuccessful, and the institution was insufficient to provide national cover. The appointment of the celebrated psychiatrist Luis Simarro (1851-1921) as department head brought no improvement. At the end of the century, the Leganés Mental Hospital was far from being a "modern and model" establishment, and it had become a charity and an asylum.
D049672:History, 19th Century; D006778:Hospitals, Psychiatric / Q000266:history*; D013030:Spain