The psychiatrists at Worcester had not only been concerned with Elizabeth’s overuse of her brain, however, but also her irregular menstrual cycle, as noted on her admittance form.
In the nineteenth century, doctors were certain that women’s menstrual cycles made them liable, indeed likely, to go mad, despite no confirmatory scientific evidence. Whether they were menstruating too much or too little, were pregnant, breastfeeding, infertile, or menopausal, every single life stage relating to women’s sexual organs was deemed saturated with risk. Mothers were encouraged to delay their daughters’ periods—by making them take cold baths and avoid meat, feather beds, and those ever-pernicious novels—as the moment menstruation began, a woman was subject to its uncontrollable forces, which exerted a disastrous effect upon her mind.
It was a theory that dated back to ancient times. Documents from circa 1900 BC described how a woman’s insanity sprang from the position of her uterus; in those days, it was believed to roam about her body, so treatments focused on sending it back to its proper place, mostly via malodorous or sweet-smelling substances, which were placed at either her vagina or her nostrils depending on which way the doctor wanted the womb to wend. The smelling salts that Elizabeth’s peers frequently carried with them were a direct descendant of this centuries-old theory: when a hysterical Victorian woman swooned, a quick sniff of the salts would swiftly restore her sanity. It was no coincidence that the word hysteria, in fact, derives from the ancient Greek for uterus.
Elizabeth herself gave neither theory credence: her teenage committal was not caused by her period or her mental labor. To the end of her days, she maintained that her father had “very needlessly and unkindly”13 placed her in the asylum after she’d become physically sick with brain fever—what modern-day doctors believe to be meningitis or encephalitis. Elizabeth reported that the moment she’d recovered from her physical illness （and its then-standard treatment of venesection; she’d been bled excessively in her view）， her mind had recovered as well.
Her medical record in many ways supports her account. Though most patients at the asylum stayed for months or even years, Elizabeth had been released in just six weeks.
As she walked into the Illinois State Hospital in June 1860, she could only hope this new incarceration would prove as short-lived as her first.
They were expecting her. As the Packards entered the ten-foot-wide hall, a young man in his midtwenties greeted her. By the light of the gas lamps, she could see he had soft blue eyes and a full black beard. Politely, he introduced himself as Dr. Tenny, the asylum’s assistant physician. He was second-in-command at the asylum; the superintendent was away on business.
Tenny’s manner, Elizabeth was relieved to find, was like that of “a tender brother,”14 an impression heightened when no formal paperwork was completed that night. The doors to the offices that lined the hall stayed shut. Instead, Elizabeth was escorted directly to a women’s ward in the original west wing. Theophilus did not join them. He would be provided accommodations within the stately guest apartments.
After twenty-one years, husband and wife went their separate ways.
It was the smell that hit Elizabeth first. As soon as she left the public realm of the reception hall, a “horrid and sickening stench”15 accosted her, what one doctor described as “the peculiar taint which apartments long occupied by the insane are apt to contract.”16 She noticed, too, that the attractive furnishings that had graced the entrance hall were gone; cheap, uncomfortable items stood in their stead. Together, she and Tenny walked along a wide corridor, pausing only when they reached a certain door: the entrance to Seventh Ward. With a clatter of his keys, Tenny unlocked it.
An attendant came to meet them: thirty-six-year-old Mrs. De La Hay, who hailed from Tennessee. Yet she could show Elizabeth to no comfortable apartment. Due to overcrowding, every bed in Seventh Ward was taken. Elizabeth was ushered into a tiny room with a narrow settee bed instead.
It was, at least, private. With a heavy sigh, Elizabeth sat down on the bed’s hard surface. She was served plain biscuits for supper. It was a world away from the meals she had once cooked for her family and herself. Given only a domestic sphere to conquer, Elizabeth had set about doing so in style; it was against her principles to half do anything. In Manteno, she’d grown her own fruits and vegetables—asparagus, currants, thimbleberries, and more—and spent her days roasting beef and baking “notion and custard-pies.”17 Even Theophilus had admitted he couldn’t find her equal as a cook.