'Curative' and 'Custodial': Benefits of Patient Treatment at the Asylum for the Insane, Kingston, 1878-1906
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Nineteenth-century asylums have generally been portrayed negatively for their inability to offer a beneficial therapy program for patients. Identifying numerous contributing factors, historians have suggested that the practised 'moral treatment' therapy ultimately failed because it did not decrease numbers of custodial patients. Using the files of women patients admitted to the Asylum for the Insane in Kingston, Ontario, between 1878 and 1884, this paper offers an alternative view, demonstrating the successes of the treatment program for women suffering from milder forms of mental illness. It also questions the role of custodial care, suggesting that asylums also offered chronic patients a safe and compassionate alternative when all other options had been exhausted. Les asiles du dix-neuvi�me si�cle ont �t�, en g�n�ral, d�peints n�gativement en raison de leur incapacit� d'offrir un programme th�rapeutique b�n�fique � leurs patients. Les historiens, apr�s avoir identifi� plusieurs facteurs, ont laiss� entendre que la th�rapie appliqu�e du � traitement moral � a �chou� en fin de compte, car elle n'a pas diminu� le nombre de patients en milieu surveill�. En s'appuyant sur les dossiers des patientes admises � l'Asile d'ali�n�s de Kingston (Ontario), entre 1878 et 1884, cet article offre un point de vue alternatif, d�montrant le succ�s du programme de traitement pour femmes souffrant d'une forme plus b�nigne de maladie mentale. Il met �galement en question le r�le des soins en milieu surveill�, en donnant � penser que les asiles offraient aux patientes chroniques une alternative s�curitaire et compatissante lorsque toutes les autres options avaient �t� �puis�es.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.007 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.007 | 0.005 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.008 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".