Photoessay #1476 - The Book

The book of life and death if you were listed as an inmate at Western Hospital for the Insane between 1916-1946. This large book filled out with meticulous handwriting lists the admissions, diagnosis and disposition (including deaths) for all who enter.

Many who entered tried to escape and those attempts are duly noted.

Ilana and I went to the State Archives in Olympia to search the records of Western State Hospital. We were looking for Dennis' grandmother Ruth Anderson and, in a more general way, we were looking for the effects of endemic encephalitis on the institution.

Dennis' grandmother Ruth disappeared from the family soon after her daughter's birth. No more pictures uin the photo album. Lanaya would simply say that she had no mother. And her relatives were NOT talking in the 1970s and 1980s when I would ask. Nobody was saying anything, all lips were sealed. Cousin Alice did say once, whispering mournfully "The sleeping sickness, terrible, terrible."

I couldn't figure that out for a long long time. Sleeping sickness? Encephalitis? Didn't that have to do with Africa and the Tsetse fly? How did that work in West Seattle?

Until one evening about twenty years ago when I was reading a library book about viruses and epidemics. Shortly after the influenza epidemic of 1918, people started coming down with "sleeping sickness", an endemic encephalitis. Apparently 5 million people worldwide contracted this. After the flu-like symptoms, the patient may sink into a sleep for weeks or months. If they survived that, they often would develop a form of parkinsonism. Most needed to be institutionalized; these were the source of Oliver Sacks "Awakenings" patients.

I put the book down in astonishment. THIS had been what happened to Ruth, I was sure of it.

But I never knew if that was true.

Until today.

We found her listing in the Western Hospital for the Insane book. Her death was noted with the following

"Hemorrhagic bronchopneumonia, pyonephraxis, Parkinsons Syndrome, Psychosis with epidemic encephalitis"

There it was. I was right. I had called it. I was almost overwhelmed seeing it.

But I started looking for others and had trouble finding them. I found some, but not many. Ruth's diagnosis had this code "003-163". Looking through the book, I saw that this code was associated with the other encephalitis deaths. I found it listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual - Mental Disorders published by the American Psychiatric Association in 1952.

There was also a "Reason for Insanity" column. Some amusing ones" "Oija Board", "Drinking Cider and Ginger", "Spiritualism", "shrapnel" and the ever popular "Pregnancy".

I think I'll need another session with that book.