Exhibition When malaria was infected as a therapy in the Basel psychiatric ward

With the special exhibition "crazy normal", the Basel Historical Museum is shedding light on 150 years of psychiatric history in Basel. In addition to explanatory installations, the exhibition features historical equipment and, from today's perspective, original objects from past times of diagnosis and therapy.

The ambivalent mission of psychiatry, namely healing and control as well as locking people away, has basically remained the same, explained exhibition curator Gudrun Piller on Wednesday during the media tour of the exhibition. This used to be the case in the "madhouse" and has remained so in the contemporary clinic.

However, with its historical arc from the end of the 19th century to the present day, the special exhibition shows that much has changed in this field of medicine and that the boundary between crazy and normal has shifted.

The exhibition includes installations that explain and illustrate many of the psychiatric illnesses. There are also films with interviews with today's patients, relatives and specialists.

Exciting insights into earlier methods

What is particularly exciting, however, are the insights into earlier diagnostic and therapeutic methods. Here, the museum was able to draw on the historical collection of the University Psychiatric Clinics of Basel, which it took over in 2018. There are also insights into historical medical records from the State Archives, which can be accessed at media stations.

On display are sheets for the so-called tube shaft test, a device that was used for electric shock therapy (which exists again in Basel) and a restraint belt for lashing patients.

Reference is also made to therapy methods that seem rather absurd from today's perspective, such as malaria therapy. Patients with progressive paralysis from syphilis were subjected to a fever attack in the expectation of relief. This therapy was used until the 1940s.

The exhibition "crazy normal" can be seen until June 29 in the main building of the Basel Historical Museum in the Barfüsserkirche. Basel's first "ward for the mentally ill" was housed in the former Barfüsser monastery from 1529.