Inmate life in the Oneida County Asylum, 1860--1895: A biocultural study of the skeletal and documentary records (New York)

This dissertation examines biological and historical records for the health consequences of long term institutionalization in nineteenth century North America. The biocultural approach is taken to investigate interactions between cultural, environmental, and biological factors in nineteenth century contexts. The Onieda Asylum skeletal sample, the Albany Almshouse skeletal sample, and socio-historical documents serve as the case studies and original data presented in this analysis. The Oneida Asylum skeletal sample represents inmates from a long term institution (an asylum for the mentally ill), from the second half of the nineteenth century in upstate New York. The Albany Almshouse skeletal sample, a short term institution from late nineteenth century upstate New York, is used in this study to represent life in the general population for comparison with the Oneida Asylum. Methodologies for this project include: Critical analysis of socio-historical documents; computerized anatomical digitizing and long bone robusticity indices (cortical maintenance and biomechanics); Diseased & Missing Tooth Index (DMI) and Caries Rate; differential diagnosis (marcroscopic and radiography) of paleopathological lesions.; This study uncovers the unique suite of health consequences associated with the culturally constructed institutional environment in nineteenth century America. Labor therapy was ubiquitous as a form of treatment in long term institutions to reform, cure, or rehabilitate social deviants. One biomechanical consequence of labor therapy was increased skeletal robusticity into old age. Other indicators of the consequences of labor therapy at the Oneida Asylum are unusually high frequencies of Schmorl's nodes and compression fractures in the spine. Inmate oral health suffered at the Oneida Asylum due to a complete absence of professional and personal oral hygiene. The DMI and CI in the Oneida Asylum skeletal sample is poorer than any recorded for nineteenth century North America. Paleopathological patterns reveal particular fracture patterns in extremities, vertebral fractures, high pathogen burden, and miscellaneous conditions (cerebral palsy, poliomyelitis, hyperostosis frontalis interns). The biocultural perspective is utilized to explain the health consequences as biological outcomes of the social, economic, political, and medical environment that created nineteenth century long term institutions.