Encyclopedia of Asylum Therapeutics, 1750-1950s by de Young Mary;

Author:de Young, Mary;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Published: 2015-02-12T16:00:00+00:00

Nightcap, or Wet Cap, or Ice Cap

A double linen cap either dipped in cold water or with shards of ice placed between its folds, or a bladder or clay cap filled with ice. The nightcap was placed on the shaved head of the patient to reduce irritation and fury, and to induce sleep. Its use was predicated on the theory that what generally was referred to as “mania,” was caused by a plethora of blood in the brain. In the words of Joseph Mason Cox, medical superintendent of Fishponds, a large private asylum near Bristol, England, that excess produced “grotesque and incongruous catenations of thought, while the sense of sight, hearing, and feeling are morbidly affected” (Cox, p. 27). It also caused the patient “to retain heat with great tenacity” (p. 120), a symptom that could be easily relieved through the application of the nightcap.

To equalize the circulation of blood through the body, many physicians took the advice of Achille-Louis-François Foville, medical superintendent of the Saint-Yon Asylum in Rouen, France, and immersed the patient’s feet or entire body in warm water while wearing the nightcap. Foville recommended the patient be kept in the warm bath for as long as two to three hours, and for many as two to three times a day, observing that anything less would increase, rather than decrease, agitation. He claimed so much success with this treatment that he boldly declared, “la folie est curable.”

The nightcap was used in asylums throughout the world during the nineteenth century. Its use far outlasted the “plethora” theory of madness that had given rise to it in the first place.

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