Free Entrance to the Lunatic Asylum…

At the turn of the nineteenth century, England and France combined had only a few hundred individuals in asylums, but by 1900 this number had risen to the hundreds of thousands. The United States housed 150,000 patients in mental hospitals by 1904 with the average number of patients jumping by 927%. Germany housed more than 400 public and private sector asylums. 

So did an epidemic of madness suddenly grip Europe and the US? Records of reasons for admission to an asylum make for fascinating read...