Life in darkness: how love crippled the soul and body of a beautiful girl (9 photos)

Love is a tricky thing. But young souls are pretty quick recovering from the consequences of unrequited or unhappy love. After all, on then it is life to be disappointed, to overcome obstacles, become stronger and move on. But in the case of this girl everything it turned out not to be so.





Rhoda Derry was born in 1840. Life the girls were easy and carefree: their father’s farm brought income, and about bread there was no need to worry about anything.



Young Rhoda

But everything changed when love came into the heart of young Rhoda. The 16-year-old girl's chosen one was her neighbor Charles Phoenix. Boyfriend's parents We weren’t thrilled with our son’s choice. Was there a rumor going around that Rhoda's grandmother practiced witchcraft, or they had some kind of score to settle with the chosen one's family. But under pressure from his family, the young man abandoned his love and left Rhoda.

Life is over...



Several years after the onset of the disease

For the impressionable young lady, this became a tragedy. She refused to eat, did not want to talk to anyone. I just lay there and shed tears. Then Rhoda started hallucinating. The girl claimed that hears voices. And one - especially persistent, which belonged to failed mother-in-law, cursed her.

The family realized that they could not correct the situation on their own. And we decided to trust the doctors.

Hell on earth



So the girl became a patient in a psychiatric hospital Jacksonville. Psychiatry at that time was in its infancy, so the doctors threw up their hands and said that they could not do anything.

The parents took their daughter home. But the health of those no longer young Jacob and Rachel began to fail them. And the woman was assigned to state almshouse. Where her personal hell began.

The Crib



One of the few available tools for psychiatrists of that time there was this design. The Crib represents something between a bed and a cage. In this lattice chest patients were placed so that they would not harm themselves or others.

The staff didn’t think much about the people’s condition. After all, in such people who were no longer needed by anyone ended up in almshouses - beggars, old people, loners with mental disorders.

Rhoda was placed in such a chest. And relatively stable The woman’s condition began to rapidly deteriorate. The unfortunate woman vomited eyeballs, damaged her ears and knocked out her teeth so as not to see and hear the whispers of devilish forces and not answer them.

Living in the dark



The almshouse where Rhoda was kept

Most of the unfortunate Rhoda’s life passed in this state. – more than 40 years. The woman was unable to move due to which caused the muscles to completely atrophy, and the patient lost the ability to walk, stand and even sit.

In 1892, he came to Adam County, where the institution was located. the reporter. The man was horrified by the conditions of detention of the unfortunates patients. And he made the story public by publishing an article.

The rescue



After rescue

It was not until 1904 that Dr. George Zeller, a pioneer in field of psychiatry saved the unfortunate woman, with whom those around her sympathized, but there was nothing they could do.

In the hospital, which Zeller was in charge of, the patient quickly went on the mend. To the extent possible, of course, taking into account it condition. But under normal conditions, she began to come to her senses and healed almost a full life.

Rhoda's health was severely damaged. Still in the poorhouse she fell ill with tuberculosis, which took her life two years after salvation. The woman died at the age of 66.



Derry gravestone

Modern psychiatrists who studied the Derry case came to conclusion that the trigger for the development of schizophrenia was severe stress - refusal from the girlfriend of a loved one. One of the manifestations of the disease was hallucinations that the patient suffered throughout her life and due to whom she wounded and mutilated herself.



Book based on the story of Rhoda

If Zeller had known about her earlier, then perhaps fate For women things would not have turned out so sadly. But Rhoda's story anyway remained an illustrative example of how important in our fleeting life love, care, mercy and compassion.