When I first encountered the “Pennsylvania State Lunatic Hospital” in an archive folder, I hardly expected the challenges I would encounter and the complexity of such a rich history that both intimidated yet excited me. I vividly remember sifting through pages of primary documents at the Pennsylvania State Archives, searching through maps, brochures, photographic images, and newspapers that held the history of the Harrisburg State Hospital, and being overwhelmed by its depth but determined to engage with it. Thankfully, our class research did not end at the state archives (it was nevertheless fantastic); a week later, we found ourselves excavating more primary sources at the Historical Society of Dauphin County archives. Immediately, as I encountered the letters of two male wards from the hospital, William Smith and Sigmund Purist, their voices pulled my attention to capture their words and place them in the context of Pennsylvania State Lunatic Hospital’s beginnings.
At the Dauphin County archives, I encountered Dorothea Dix’s Memorial, which helped orient my research to the significance of “moral treatment” that transformed medical approaches in America. Dix’s petition, read to the Pennsylvania State Legislature on February 3, 1845, argued that the state should create a mental hospital to care for the “insane poor” of Pennsylvania. After much secondary research through Ernest Morris’ The City on the Hill: A History of the Harrisburg State Hospital and Philip Thomas’ Harrisburg State Hospital: Pennsylvania’s First Public Asylum, I connected Dix’s memorial as a product of moral treatment ideas in 19th century America and its influence on its establishment and institutional organization.
As a learning historian, developing the content by reading various secondary sources, analyzing my primary sources, and connecting ideas quickly became my favorite part. Of course, the objective of the “Digital History” course was to engage with history through careful attention to metadata, photograph qualities, organization of the website, and more—which proved more challenging than expected. I had to carefully consider the technological medium to capture images with the best quality for public dissemination. For example, the CZUR scanner captured William Smith’s letter better than my iPhone ever would since it was clear and without glare. Rosenzweig in Digital History (2005) emphasizes that careful and reliable digitization is essential to preserve the digital present to preserve the past (Rosenzweig, 26). As I was engaging with primary sources at the archives, I had to remember the importance of such careful digitization and collection of metadata. They finalized my project through clear referencing and quality images for public engagement.
Besides the digitization process, the website-building process through StoryMaps was another challenge. The function of StoryMaps is simple enough, but effectively integrating all the materials and adding analysis, images, and references was difficult. I noticed the sheer attention to detail needed to create an aesthetically pleasing and high-quality website while being rich with detail, depth, and analysis. It was nearly tempting to neglect one for the other. Thankfully, I didn’t. Though not flawless, I ensured that my final presentation executed clarity of thought, argument, and organization while managing multiple sources and incorporating close analysis for in-depth understanding of the hospital’s history.
In the end, my final project, “Harrisburg’s Once “Lunatic” Hospital,” actively engaged with the primary source materials that I encountered at the Pennsylvania State Archives and the Historical Society of Dauphin County archives. I managed to engage with different kinds of source documents, extract the voices of patients living between the hospital walls in the 19th century, and place them in the context of “moral treatment” that pervaded medical culture. All these, including the tedious process of careful digitization—collection of metadata and high-quality images—onto the website, are designed in a way that (hopefully) captures the public’s engagement and deepens thought. Though the hospital is no longer the “Pennsylvania State Lunatic Hospital,” I hope the public may be fascinated by its context of moral treatment and that the voices of inhabitants like William Smith and Sigmund Purist may reach their ears and captivate them as much as they did to me at the archives.
My initial post on the subject is available here: “Harrisburg’s Once “Lunatic Hospital” and Two Archive Visits Later…“
Sophia Snyder is a junior History major at Messiah, and is excited to share her experience working on Digital History projects.
Digital Harrisburg 