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Most people tend to avoid asylums. They worry there might be something... contagious in the air.

Dr. Lydgate to Dr. Sheffield src

Bethlem Asylum, also known as Bethlem Royal Hospital,[1] is a Victorian England location featured on ABC's Once Upon a Time in Wonderland. It first appears in the first episode.

Bethlem Asylum is inspired by the real life Bethlem Royal Hospital in London.

History

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During First Curse


After First Curse


Trivia

On-Screen Notes

  • Roman numerals are written at the front entrance of the asylum: "MDCCCLXVII"[2] which means 1867. ("Down the Rabbit Hole," "Who's Alice")
  • The surgical instruments used in the "procedure" Dr. Lydgate prepares to perform on Alice includes a drill, a circular bone saw and a scalpel,[3] suggesting that the "procedure" is a removal of parts of the cerebral cortex. This form of psychosurgery was first performed by the Swizz physician Gottlieb Burckhardt in the 1880s, and was the first time that evidence that surgical manipulation of the brain could calm patients, emerged.[4] Alice's homeworld is a version of the late 1800s. ("Down the Rabbit Hole")
    • In the decades following Burkhardt's work, there were few attempts at surgical disruption of the human brain, until a more infamous form of psychosurgery emerged in the form of lobotomy.[4] However, unlike Burkhardt's procedure, and Lydgate's procedure on Once Upon a Time in Wonderland, it involved an icepick-like instrument and a hammer, with the icepick being hammered through the eye socket and into the brain.[5] Modern lobotomy was first performed on a human being in 1946, although alternate versions of procedure, involving different instruments and methods, were performed as early as 1935.[4]
  • According to the painter, Bethlem Asylum is located "just past Westminster Bridge". ("Who's Alice")

Production Notes

Props Notes


BETHLEM ROYAL HOSPITAL


St GEORGE'S
FIELDS
SOUTHWARK LONDON


PRIMUM NON
NOCERE


Special Procedure


I hereby consent to the special procedure outlined to me by
Dr. Arthur Lydgate. Under the Lunacy Act and County
Asylums Act of 1845, I understand that Dr. Arthur Lydgate has the
authority to detain me until such a time that I exhibit recuperative
progress as to be indicative of a cessation of the symptoms of mania,
lunacy, idiocy and other unsoundness of mind or moral turpitude.

Dr. Arthur Lydgate will submit an assessment to the
Commission and the Home Secretary's Office. It is under their
ultimate authority that I will determine my eventual release. The
Lunacy Commission will restrict my access to the courts of law, so that
I may not challenge the legality of my sequestration or care.

By signing below, I hereby indicate that I understand the
legal stipulations outlined in the above.


Signed [Alice's signature]
Witness
Dr. Arthur Lydgate, M.D.
Signed day of the month
  • A handwritten piece of paper on Dr. Lydgate's desk[8] is adapted from excerpts from the first chapter of "The psychology of dementia praecox" by Carl Jung.[9] The handwritten notes are illegible on-screen and some of it is obscured, but the document can be read in concept art[10] and a prop photo[11] (note that in order to make layout of the text fit into the table, the entire transcript has been shrunken down):
ORIGINAL VERSION
SHOW VERSION





Yet psycho-analysis uncovers the motives, and
BETHLEM ROYAL HOSPITAL


Attending Physician: Dr. Arthur Lydgate, M.D.

Patient's Name: Alice
we then begin to understand why the patients
reacted in such a manner. In dementia prascox we are
at present unable to penetrate deep enough so that
the relations remain unknown, and we therefore assume
an "ataxia" between noo- and thymo-psyche. Thanks to
analysis we know that in hysteria there is no
"ataxia," but only an oversensitiveness,
which, as soon as we know the pathogenic ideational complex,
becomes clear and intelligible.
It is important to understand why the patients
reacted in such a matter. In dementia praox [sic] we are
at present unable to penetrate deep enough so that
relations remain unknown, and we therefore assume
an "ataxia" between noo- and thymo-psyche. Thanks to
my research, we know that in hysteria there is no
"ataxia" to speak of, but only an over-sensiting [sic]
which as soon as we know the pathogenic ideati [sic]
it becomes clear and easy to perceive. One should
Knowing how the incongruity is brought about in hysteria, is it still necessary that we should accept a totally new mechanism in dementia praecox? In general we know by far too little about the psychology of the normal and hysteric 59 to dare to accept in such an untransparent disease as dementia prsecox, a totally new mechanism unknown to all psychology.
/
One should
[see the end of the first paragraph]
be economical with new principles of interpretation. It
is for this reason that I repudiate the clear and ingenious hypothesis
of Stransky.
be economical with rules of interpretation. It
is for this reason that I repudiate all the hypothesis [sic].


As a compensation for the above, we possess a very excellent experimental work by Stransky 60 which gives us the foundation for the understanding of an important symptom, namely, the speech disorders.
/
The speech disorder is the product of the main
psychological disturbance. Stransky calls it
"intrapsychic ataxia."1 Whenever there is a
disturbance at the points of contact of the emotional
life and ideation, as in dementia praecox, producing
thereby in the normal thought the lack of orientation
by a controlling idea (Liepmann), there must result a
stream of thought resembling flight of ideas.
The disturbance is the product of the main
psychological disturbance. I call it
intra-psychic ataxia. Whenever there is a
disturbance at the points of contact of the emotional
life and ideation – as in dementia praecox, producing
thereby in the normal thought the lack of orientation
by a single controlling idea. There must result a
stream of thought resembling flight of ideas in general.
As Pelletier has shown, the laws of association
predominate against the influence of direction. If it is a
question of a process of speech there must result an
increase in the purely superficial elements of
connection (motor speech association and sound
reactions), as was shown in our associations
As I believe I have shown, the laws of association
predominate against the influence of direction. If it is a
question of speech there must an
increase in the purely superficial elements of
connection (motor speech association and sound
reactions), as was shown in our ongoing associations.
experiments with distracted attention. Arthur Lydgate
1"Intrapsychic ataxia" is a term invented by Austrian psychiatrist Erwin Stransky (1877 – 1962) and refers to functional disharmony among various parts of the psyche.[12]
PURE
LAUDANUM

451/2 [sic] GRAINS OPIUM AND 65% ALCOHOL

POISON

DOSE.
3 months old 3 drops
One year old 4 drops
Four years old 5 drops
Ten years old 14 drops
Twenty years old 25 drops
Adults 30 drops

FROM
THE LABORATORY OF
Westlake & Son
CHEMISTS

Plymouth, England
("Who's Alice")


  • Laudanum is a highly addictive solution of dissolved opium powder and alcohol. During the Victorian era, which Alice's world is based on, it was lauded as a cure-all remedy in Europe and North America and was readily available in stores and grocers, even pubs. It was used to soothe everything from headaches to depression.[17]
  • Notice how Dr. Lydgate's medicine contains 65% alcohol; laudanum usually contains 25 percent alcohol on average, but some variants contain as much as 60–90 percent.[17]
  • The label on the bottle is based on real antique laudanum bottles:[18] It is labeled "poison", has an illustration of a skull at the top, states the amount of opium grains and percentage of alcohol, states the number of drops recommended for the ages of 3 months, one, four, ten and twenty years old, and adults; and the name of the production company and where it was produced, is printed at the bottom.
  • "Westlake and Son" is a reference to Neil Westlake, a prop designer on Once Upon a Time and its spin-off.
  • Plymouth is a port city on the south coast of Devon, England.

Set Dressing

Filming Locations

Appearances

References

  1. File:W101BethlemRoyalHospital.png / "I'm looking for Bethlem Royal Hospital. Is it near?" --Jafar to the painter, "Who's Alice".
  2. 2.0 2.1 File:W106AsylumEntrance.png
    File:W106BethlemAsylum.png
  3. File:W101SurgicalInstruments.png
    File:W101SurgicalInstruments2.png
  4. 4.0 4.1 4.2 lobotomy. Encyclopædia Britannica. “Evidence that surgical manipulation of the brain could calm patients first emerged in the late 1880s, when Swiss physician Gottlieb Burkhardt [sic], who supervised an insane asylum, removed parts of the brain cortex in patients suffering from auditory hallucinations and other symptoms of mental illness (symptoms later defined medically as schizophrenia). (...) In the decades following Burkhardt's [sic] work, there were few attempts at surgical disruption of the human brain. (...) Also in 1935, Portuguese neurophysician António Egas Moniz headed a similar operation on a human. Moniz, who was affected by gout and could not use his hands to perform the surgery, enlisted the help of Portuguese surgeon Pedro Almeida Lima. The surgery consisted of drilling two holes in the patient's head and then injecting pure ethyl alcohol into the prefrontal cortex. (...) Moniz created an instrument called a leukotome (leucotome), designed specifically to disrupt the tracts of neuronal fibres connecting the prefrontal cortex and thalamus of the brain. Moniz and Lima operated on nearly 40 patients by 1937; however, the results were mixed, with some patients improving, others showing no change in symptoms, and still others relapsing. Despite this, the practice was soon widely adopted, largely because there were few other therapeutic measures available at the time for quieting chronically agitated, delusional, self-destructive, or violent patients. (...) In 1945 Freeman streamlined the procedure, replacing it with transorbital lobotomy, in which a picklike instrument was forced through the back of the eye sockets to pierce the thin bone that separates the eye sockets from the frontal lobes. The pick's point was then inserted into the frontal lobe and used to sever connections in the brain (presumably between the prefrontal cortex and thalamus). In 1946 Freeman performed this procedure for the first time on a patient, who was subdued prior to the operation with electroshock treatment.”
  5. Charleston, BJ (July 28, 2019). An ice pick to the brain: The horror of the frontal lobotomy. The New Zealand Herald. “It was the most brutal, barbaric and infamous medical procedure of all time: an icepick hammered through the eye socket into the brain and "wriggled around", often leaving the patient in a vegetative state. (...) Then the icepick-like instrument was inserted above the patient's eyeball. Using a hammer, the icepick was hammered into the eggshell thin bone above the eye, where the instrument was wriggled back and forth to sever the connections to the prefrontal cortex in the frontal lobes of the brain.”
  6. File:W101BethlemAsylum.png
    File:W101BethlemAsylum2.png
  7. File:W101BethlemRoyalHospital.png
    File:W101Paper.png
  8. File:W101BethlemRoyalHospital.png
  9. The Psychology of Dementia Præcox/Chapter I. Wikisource. Retrieved on June 4, 2019.
  10. File:W101ConceptArt5.png
  11. File:W101Prop1.jpg
  12. A Historical Dictionary of Psychiatry, Shorter, Edward, Oxford University Press, 2005, p. 271. Facsimile by Google Books.
  13. File:W101SurgicalInstruments.png
    File:W101SurgicalInstruments2.png
  14. File:W107TakingBlood.png
    File:W107TakingBlood2.png
  15. File:523GoIntoTheOtherRoom.png
  16. Once Upon a Time [sic] - Rumple's [sic] Laudanum Bottle Prop (0545). iCollector (2020). Archived from the original on December 7, 2020.
  17. 17.0 17.1 Laudanum Addiction. The Recovery Village. Retrieved on June 2, 2019. “In Victorian-era Europe and North America, laudanum was lauded as a cure-all remedy and creative aid by artists and civilians alike. (...) By definition, laudanum is a tincture, which is a solution of a dissolved drug and alcohol. (...) Opium tinctures like laudanum usually contain 25 percent ethanol (alcohol) on average, with some variants containing 60–90 percent alcohol. (...) Laudanum is highly addictive because it contains several habit-forming drugs: opium, morphine, codeine and alcohol. (...) A standardized form of the drug was created in the seventeenth century and sold in Europe and North America as a cure-all medicine. Laudanum use skyrocketed during the 1800s, when it was readily available in stores, grocers and even pubs to people of every social standing. (...) People frequently used the drug to soothe everything from headaches to depression, but unfortunately, physical dependence and addiction were not understood at this time.”
  18. ANTIQUE POISON LAUDANUM BOTTLES W/ PAPER LABEL MOYER BROS. BLOOMSBURG PA 1906. Worthpoint. Retrieved on June 2, 2019. (Photograph)
    LAUDANUM-POISON-OPIUM DRUGGIST BOTTLE CA 1900. Worthpoint. Retrieved on June 2, 2019. (Photograph)
  19. File:W101KnowYoureLying.png
    Once Upon a Time in Wonderland. Michael Joy. Retrieved on March 2, 2019. (Photograph)
  20. File:W106AvoidAsylums.png
  21. McCormack, Kirsty (June 21, 2013). Queen Victoria's mourning gown expected to sell for up to £3,000 at Derby auction. Daily Express. “Victoria's dress, which consists of a bodice and skirt, dates to around 1890 and is typical of the mourning fashion the monarch wore following Prince Albert's death in 1861.”
  22. File:W101FatherFoundYou.png
  23. File:622OptimismKid.png
    FlickrIconTemplate Lawrence Andreutti. Creation Once Upon a Time Set Tour March 5, 2016: IMG_2322 (March 5, 2016).  (archive copy) (photograph)
  24. File:W101Preposterous.png
  25. File:W106AvoidAsylums.png
  26. File:102Apologizing.png
    File:105NotHere.png
    File:215NiceToBeBack.png
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