Throughout much of the nineteenth century medical treatment in the asylums was limited to a few simple drugs, both tranquillizers and purgatives. In 1859, the medical superintendent of the Toronto asylum acknowledged that "medicine is had recourse to as little as possible and, when employed, it is administered for the relief of bodily ailments, and not for the cure of mental malady." As the century drew to a close, however, moral treatment lost its hegemony and was supplemented by a broader use of drugs, various water therapies and even surgical interventions.
Water, as a tranquillizer or a primitive form of shock therapy, played an important role in the treatment of mental illness. The "bath of surprise," a tub of frigid water into which patients were plunged in an attempt to startle them into sanity, was out of fashion, but the experts still advised assorted bathing techniques. An ordinary bath of warm water was considered soothing for manic patients; therefore major institutions had hydrotherapy rooms like the one shown here at the London asylum. There was also a variety of apparatus which dropped streams of cold water from different heights onto the heads of individuals seated with their feet in tubs of warm water. Cold water dropped from a height was "one of the most certain means of subduing violent maniacal excitement," a prestigious medical journal informed its readers in 1847.
