Asylum

What comes to mind when you hear the word asylum?
 
The word has its origins in Greek asylon (refuge, an inviolable place, safe from violence; especially for persons seeking protection) and Latin asylum (sanctuary).
 
The word asylum came to English in the early 15th century meaning a place of refuge. Originally, an asylum was a place, often a church, where people fleeing from justice or injustice could remain and from which they could not be taken without sacrilege.
 
Asylum meaning a safe or secure place is from the 1640s; meaning an inviolable shelter, protection from pursuit or arrest, is from 1712; meaning a benevolent institution to shelter some class of persons suffering social, mental, or bodily defects, is from 1773 (notably female orphans).
 
Today, the Merriam-Webster Dictionary tells us that asylum means a place of “protection or security; in particular, the protection from arrest and extradition given to political refugees...”
 
Merriam-Webster also states that the notion of an asylum as “an institution providing care and protection to needy individuals (such as the infirm or destitute), especially the mentally ill, is a somewhat old-fashioned” notion.
 
Sometimes when driving through parts of the city in which I live, I wonder if this ‘old-fashioned’ notion needs to be revisited in some non-judgmental manner as part of contemporary social justice initiatives.
 
Image: Asylum and Chapel at Saint Remy-de-Provence, France: Vincent van Gogh, 1889
 
Reference: Online Etymological Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com/