Healing and Horrors at a Roman Psychiatric Hospital

You get used to what you’ve always had. It’s not special anymore. It’s not shocking. You forget how lucky you are.

I imagine that if you live in Iceland, you don’t spend every night underneath the stars watching the Aurora Borealis undulate across the winter sky. If you live in Australia, you don’t pull the car over to watch a kangaroo hop by. If you live in Germany, you don’t glue your forehead to the train window to spot every hilltop castle you thunder by.

Or do you?

I honestly don’t know. I can tell you that I think I would. I live in a beautiful place with some pretty unique things, and I feel like I can never get enough of them! Gorgeous mountain valleys–and I can’t help but sigh, my heart content, when I drive through the winding canyons. Interesting wildlife–like moose munching on willows chest deep in mirror-still ponds and bull elk bugling challenges to other males. I could watch them for hours. My favorite hike is a high mountain valley splattered with mossy-edged pools and purple wildflowers. I could hike it every weekend and it would still move me. Still suck me in and enchant me.

Maybe it’s just me. Maybe most people aren’t like that. Maybe there are only certain people in the world who, no matter how many times they see something–if that something means enough to them–it’s meaningful. Every time it’s meaningful.

I wonder about the people living in Turkey. Is it meaningful to them that they can throw a rock and hit yet another gorgeous ancient ruin? Or it simply another thing that hardly warrants noticing, like another corn field in eastern Colorado, or another vineyard on the way to Pergamum?

But there are some people, I am certain, who can see it everyday and still feel moved, can drive across Turkey and want to stop at every ruin, every archeological site, every fortress. Tell me you are out there! Tell me humanity isn’t cursed to only appreciate that which is rare.

Perhaps it’s only because the United States is so void of ancient cities and archaic remnants that I am so enamored with ancient things. It doesn’t matter that I’ve seen Roman ruins before. Each one is unique. Each one sucks me in, whether a single structure, like Pont du Gard, or something more, like the ruins in Pergamum.

Like Troy, the modern town of Pergamum was built on top of the ruins of the ancient city.

In 133 BC, Attalus III died childless and left his land to Rome so they would not slaughter his people. The kingdom of Pergamum peacefully became a Roman province. At the time, the city of Pergamum was the second largest city in Asia and had the second largest library in the empire (only Alexandria was bigger).

As I wrote above, the king’s fortress and religious buildings were built upon the hill: both for defensive reasons (the fortress) and glorification reasons (the temples). Of the town itself, little remains and anything that does is buried beneath the modern town.

But, Pergamum wasn’t just a castle and city.

The Asklepion

The cult of Asklepios (the god of medicine and healing) built the Asklepion outside of the city of Pergamum near to a sacred spring that still bubbles today. It was a center of healing and the world’s first psychiatric hospital. While the site was founded in the 4th century BC, the ruins we can see today are from 117-138 AD. The famous physician Galen, who got his start treating gladiators, was born in Pergamum and came to work at the Asklepion in the 2nd century AD.

This road connected the city of Pergamum to the Asklepion. The sides of the road were covered (see the remnants of columns) and goods were sold along the way. Roman roads tended to be paved with stone. They often had a trench dug down the middle and then covered with stone so that water would drain from the roads. In the picture below, the drainage trench is visible only because the weeds growing out of the road seem to thrive along either side of it.

The sick walked from Pergamum on this road, called the Sacred Way, to reach the Asklepion. There were very strict requirements to enter. The Asklepion wanted to maintain it’s reputation as a place of healing, not a place of death. One could not be too sick that there was little chance of recovery, and pregnant women were forbidden all together because childbirth was too dangerous.

Though a well-known institution in it’s day, the Asklepion’s approach to treatment would leave a modern doctor scratching his or her head. When patients first arrived, they were led to a chamber to sleep. It was believed that Asklepios would visit the ill while dreaming. In the morning, the physicians asked about the patients’ dreams, and determined the correct treatments accordingly. Treatment was surprisingly comprehensive, with options such as mud baths, massages, drinking from the sacred spring, diet changes, surgeries, blood-letting (that old thing), and herbal remedies. The theater pictured above was for performances, to provide entertainment for long-stay patients. The central belief at the Asklepion was that healing was sacred, and that souls needed to be mended along with limbs.

Psychiatric patients were accepted at the Asklepion, probably because they were in little danger of dying. The physicians would attempt to treat them, as well. In fact, there are several tunnels throughout the ruins. According to our guide, the physicians would send patients into the tunnels, block off the ends, and drop snakes down as a sort of shock therapy.

Of course, the snake was also a symbol of Asklepios, as the shedding and regrowth of a snake’s skin represented regeneration. So maybe it was also a plea to the god.

People still visit the Asklepion for spiritual healing and to drink the sacred spring water in hopes that they might be healed.

So the tourists come. The ill come. Do the townspeope visit the Asklepion? Do familes across Turkey pack up for a road trip and hit the belt of Roman ruins?

I would. I’ve gotten to explore plenty of Roman ruins on this trip and on previous trips, and yet, as we left the Asklepion, all I could see were the ruins of the fortress and several temples atop the hill in the distance… And I was dying to go check them out too!