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Sunday, June 2, 2019

'Ten Days in a Mad-House' by Nellie Bly

Ten Days in a Mad-HouseTen Days in a Mad-House by Nellie Bly

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The saddest and scariest part of this journalistic account from the late 19th century (originally published in 1887) is how easy it was for the reporter to be declared "incurable." No one even remotely tried to "cure" her.

By McD - Penn University library, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16890004
In fact, of the women she encountered in the "mad-house," few of them would be considered mentally ill by today's diagnostic standards. No doubt some of them were depressed, but others were grieving. Some of them were just poor. One woman couldn't be evaluated at all because she didn't speak English and none of the four doctors could speak German.


It was shockingly easy for a woman to be locked away forever, mistreated, and deemed incurable just because she had unfortunate life circumstances happen to her.

I listened to this LibriVox audiobook - free public domain books read by volunteers - using the Podcoin app on my phone. Podcoin pays you tiny amounts of money to listen to podcasts and Librivox books. You can donate your pennies to charities or save them up to exchange for gift cards.

To get 300 free podcoins when you sign up, use the referral code NERDY. This benefits the Nerdy Bitches podcast. I'm not affiliated with it in any way other than being a fan. Past episodes have covered Harry Potter books, the Divergent series, Ready Player One, geek crushes, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, an entire month of Batman podcasts, and much, much more.

Some of the many LibriVox books you can listen to on Podcoin include:

12 Creepy Tales by Edgar Allan Poe
Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Julius Casear by William Shakespeare
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
Middlemarch by George Eliot
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

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