Room 207A

"Treatment" How about torture.

Torture? How is it torture?

Torture, you know, with flowers and bunnies.

The flower stickers give it an eerie feel. Like you would here childeren's droned out singing in the background or something. Doesn anyone have any idea what I'm talking about?

Oh yes .. I agree "fashionpage88'' .. The flowers add a *more* eerie look to that whole room, too.

I don't know--hydrotherapy in itself, back in the 1800's, wasn't particularly pleasant all the time, either. Nevermind the flower stickers, being plunged into cold water as a cure for...whatever ails your legs...doesn't sound too helpful.

Hey, my grandmother put those flower stickers in her bathtub to keep me from sliding back and forth.
(about 27 years ago :)

In the 50's and 60's Hydrotherapy was also used as a form of punishment or control, along with 'wet sheet wraps' . It wouldn't be surprising that there would be tubs like this on each floor - they'd be an ever present reminder of what would happen if one couldn't control themselves.

Hydrotherapy tubs used for that purpose look quite different than these tubs. The tub on the left is your basic "slab tub" used for people have physical disabilities or who are older/more frail. Their use decreases client and staff injuries because it lessens lifting injuries. Also, hydrotherapy tubs used as treatment in the above manner were used in mental health facilities and this is/was a developmental center.

This looks very much like a place I was familiar with in Maryland, and since it is paired with another site in Maryland, I'm guessing this is the same place. If so, I knew someone who worked there as her first job as a teenager. She described caring for and bathing a 65-year-old woman who had been a vegetable since birth.

I also knew someone who grew up there. From what I know of it, it was basically a home for children and adults who were profoundly retarded, many of whom were basically vegetables. So most of what you are seeing is probably the equipment needed to bathe and care for people who were unable to sit or stand. However, they apparently took overflow from local orphanages. My friend who grew up there was an orphan or was abandoned, I don't think she knew which. She was functionally retarded, but apparently was not placed there for that reason. She may have just suffered a complete lack of stimulation in that place . There apparently weren't many other children there who functioned as well as she did, so she wouldn't have had anyone to talk to.

i don't know how long ago this pic was posted but now they've removed all the tubs. they're sitting in the entrance to the building

At least they tried to decorate the place and make it a little more liveable for the patients...

Oh yes, the flowers help - now my crippling disability and depostion into this lovely place doesn't seem so bad.

So get rid of all the decorations and just suffer in starkness? Nah, try to cheer things up a bit. Maybe you don't magically cure the body and/or mind with attempts to brighten up the place, but why throw in the towel and act like life sucks just because you have a disability and live in a residential facility? Most disabilities are actually in the eyes of the beholder. The people with whom I work may have a lot of physical handicaps but they are not "suffering." They don't have the time or energy to pity themselves - they just live life one day at a time and don't worry about what other people think about them. They appreciate the time and effort people give to them and are appreciative of the little extras - much more so than "normal" people. Most taxpayers don't care enough about them to vote for sufficient funding, so generally the poorly paid direct care staff take money out of their own pockets and buy brightly colored curtains or bathtub stickers like these or anything to try to make the place a little more homey. Maybe they aren't the best decorators but I give them an A for effort.

Better than staring at plain porcelain all the time.

The flower motif on the tubs is cute. It's nice that the staff tried to cheer up the place and make things a little more pleasant for the residents.

Motts, have you ever come across a "burn tub" (not sure the proper term for it). They were used to help burn victims by using airiated water jets to gently remove the burnt skin/flesh. My uncle was burnt very very badly when the gas station he owned went up in the late 50's early 60's and they used a tub that did that. Maybe Lynne can help with a proper name.

They used to do mechanical debridement (that is, removal or scraping off) of burn tissue in "tank rooms" where they would soak the person in a whirlpool tub so the outer layer of burnt/dead skin could slough off and be easier to scrape off. Very painful, very horrifying to everyone involved. One place I could never work is a burn ward. Because of concerns regarding infection some places now use streams of water or hoses for this purpose instead of tanks of water.

But Motts is correct that they did not do this at developmental centers but rather at regular or specialized medical centers.

To re-iterate how painful it is/was, when my uncle talked about it, he stated he asked the doctor to kill him instead of continuing. He stated the treatment was worse than the burns by far, and if he had known how bad it was going to be, he would have laid in the fire and happily died. He was by no means a sad, or suicidal person, it just hurt that badly. I of course am glad he didn't die, and he turned out ok, allot of scarring etc which is expected. For some reason seeing some of the tubs on the site reminded me of him recalling his experiences.

Thanks for the medical term Lynne.

By the way, if you are weak of stomach, or eating beef jerky, as I was, don't do a google images search for debridement.

TOOO LATE!! SEARCHED IT .
LOOKS EXTREAMLY PAINFUL.

Some times they will use maggots to debride burns. The dead tissue is a maggot smorgasbord. Less painfu, andl they do a better job.

Thanks, Big Ed - I knew they did that for necrotic tissue but hadn't thought about it for burn debridement.

I just got this off a website:

"Maggot Debridement Therapy (MDT) is the medical use of live maggots (fly larvae) for treating non-healing wounds.
In maggot debridement therapy (also known as maggot therapy, larva therapy, larval therapy, biodebridement or biosurgery), disinfected fly larvae are applied to the wound for 2 or 3 days within special dressings to keep them from migrating. The literature identifies three primary actions of medical grade maggots on wounds:
1. They clean the wounds by dissolving dead and infected tissue ("debridement");
2. They disinfect the wound (kill bacteria);
3. They speed the rate of healing."

You learn something new every day! :-)

Interesting. But ewwww, wouldn't that itch or something? Having them crawling around? I guess itching is better than scraping which sounds just awful and maybe there is something like a numbing agent that they use with the maggets? Anyway. neat, but also kinda yucky and creepy.

The wound care department in the hospital where I work doesn't use maggots, but I've seen many articles and a few documentary-type shows that show the progress this treatment makes. I know of a few patients that have come into the ER with open wounds that have had maggots in them-apparently you realy don't feel itching at the site, usually these types of wounds are far too deep for superficial type of sensation.

Maggots were the quickest way to kill dead flesh. (Civil War Re-enactor)
I like the flowers on the tub myself. It gives the room a personality.

Oh lord, I wish I wouldnt have googled debridement.

Wound debriidement pictures are far better than experiencing it yourself. I was in a car wreck in 2001 that left a 50cm hole in mmy knee, all the way to the bone. still have the scar and arthritis due to it. They did the whirlpool treatment, and yes, it was painful.