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Embodied Madness: Contextualizing Biological Stress Among 19th And 20th-Century Institutionalized Euro-American Women, Madeline M. Atwell

Theses and Dissertations

The late 19th and early 20th-centuries in the United States were periods in which white women of middle and low socio-economic status were admitted into insane asylums at a higher rate than men for the first time in recorded history. An existent body of literature helps us to comprehend the social and cultural climate in which the institutionalization of women was both acceptable and commonplace; yet few studies have paired this research with the information that can be revealed on the bones of those institutionalized. A sample of 53 institutionalized women from the Robert J. Terry Anatomical Collection were analyzed …