Gliocan Lunatic Asylum
The Gliocan Lunatic Asylum, sometimes refereed to as the Gliocan Asylum, was a insane asylum and sanatorium operated by the Gliocan Temple of Temuair, and later the Imperial Ministry of Health and Human Services, located on Esperamos Illa in the Antarctic Ocean. It was established in 1856 as a treatment center for Aislings suffering from "intellectual disability", including conditions such as Down syndrome, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder, as well as conditions which now may not be considered a severe, such as hysteria and depression. A wing for persons suffering from physical ailments, primarily tuberculosis was established in 1871, and a separate leprosarium in 1880. The original facility was intended to house 350 patients in 5 wings, with 70 patients to a wing, and a 6th wing given over to the medical and support staff. Expansions throughout the 1800's inflated the capacity to a maximum to 600. However, by 1900 over 1,400 patients were housed in the asylum and associated hospital.
The facility is renown for its inhuman and unsanitary conditions during its operation, copious reports of psychical and sexual abuse of the patients by staff members, as well as a variety of questionable treatments, medical operations and experimentation carried out by its staff. As an Imperial Ministry of Health and Human Services facility starting in 1919, staff at the Gliocan School participated in a variety of government sponsored eugenics programs, including the forced sterilization and the involuntary euthanization of patients with mental deficiencies.
The facility was closed in 1970 and sat abandoned until Esperamos Illa was sold to the ParaCell Corporation in 1990. The current research facility located on Esperamos Illa, and maintained by ParaCell, is built in the foundations of the original asylum and hospital. According to Paranormal investigators, the Gliocan Asylum is one of the most active paranormal sites in the world. Access to the facility for paranormal investigations, however, is extremely limited due to the ongoing and sensitive research carried out by ParaCell.
History
Beginnings
After the discovery of Esperamos Illa, then refereed to as De Soto Illa, by Captain Estevo Paulo De Soto in 1841, the Temple of Glioca purchased the land from De Soto and began construction of a facility intended to house Aislings with "severe mental disorders." The facility, named the Gliocan Lunatic Asylum, was finished in 1855, and opened in 1856. The original facility was intended to house 250 patients, as well as support staff, including 7 doctors, various nurses, aides, and custodial staff.
In 1871 a seventh wing designated as a sanatorium was constructed to house 60 patients suffering from tuberculosis. This wing of the hospital was taken over by the general asylum administration and converted into more patient space in 1945, after the discovery of streptomycin, the first aminoglycoside class drug to be discovered, which was instrumental in providing a cure for tuberculosis.
In 1880, a separate facility, disconnected from the main hospital, was constructed and given over to the isolation and care of lepers. Like the sanatorium, this portion of the asylum was closed in the 1940's after effective treatments for leprosy were developed. This area was given over to staff housing, and was abandoned in 1979 when the Gliocan Asylum was closed. It is the only part of the original facility not incorporated into the new ParaCell research center.
By 1900 the facilities population had swelled to over 1,400 patients, the majority of which were suffering from severe mental disorders. The hospital wing, designed to hold 60 tuberculosis patients, was home to over 130 patients. Only the leprosarium remained underpopulated. The five wings of the main asylum, designed to hold 70 patients in 35 rooms, was housing upwards of 244 patients per wing, with as many as 7 patients to a singe room. Bathing and cafeteria facilities were also inadequate, leading to malnutrition and deplorable hygiene among the patient population. According to the 1917 report by the Imperial Ministry of Health and Human Services, the patients were often "clad in rags" and living in "rooms reminiscent of the comfort afforded to caged animals at a zoo."
Transfer to Imperial control
The Gliocan Asylum was forcibly acquired by the Imperial government of Temuair and placed under the jurisdiction of the Imperial Ministry of Health and Human Services in 1919. According to the government report, the seizure of the facility was due to the "deplorable" conditions in which the patients were lining, but it is more likely that the facility was brought under Imperial control as part of Minister Alexandre Rumbo's plan to bring all medical facilities and care providers in Temuair under government control so as to better implement the mandates of various government sanctioned eugenics programs underway in Temuair.
Very little was down to actually improve conditions in the asylum, although the forced euthanization of over 300 patients in 1921 alone did serve to decrease the overcrowded conditions. It is theorized that the Morte Misericordiosa (English: Merciful Death) Act was proposed partly to reduce the overcrowding at the Gliocan Asylum. Under the Morte Misericordiosa Act, physicians were directed to judge patients "incurably sick, by critical medical examination," and, so judged, were the then administer a "mercy death" to these patients. The patients were eliminated via lethal injection, and later a specialized airtight chamber was constructed to allow carbon monoxide (which was produced by diesel generators used to power various portions of the facility) to be utilized to eliminate batches of patients. The Gliocan Asylum gas chambered was demolished in 1956, and the site was completely filled in, but not before a total of 1,300 persons were eliminated. This program ran from 1921 until 1955 when the High Court ruled that the involuntary euthanasia was against the rights of a subject or citizen under the Articles of Governance and ordered a halt to all medical operations authorized by the various Eugenics Laws passed by the Imperial Government.
Reports indicate that many of the patients were physically and/or sexually abused by staff members, sometimes under the guise of treatment. Patients were reportedly chained to their beds or shackled to walls for long periods of time. Often, patients were forced to live in their own filth, though whether this was a result of inadequate sanitary facilities or willful neglect is unclear.
Other treatments practiced on the patients of the Gliocan Asylum changed as new medical or clinical treatments were devised, attempted, and discarded, or new personal were assigned to the facility. Electroconvulsive therapy or "shock therapy", was commonly used on a variety of patients exhibiting various symptoms during the operation of the asylum. Generally, it was preformed without the consent of the patient. Between 1939 and 1955, lobotomies were one of the favored methods for treating violent mental disorders. Over 1,700 people were lobotomized at the Gliocan Asylum. Some novel treatments included the removal of a patients teeth, which was standard practice at the Gliocan Aslyum between 1930 and 1941, when Doctor Cibrán Ares was the medical director of the facility. Doctor Ares advanced a theory that mental disorders were the cause of infections, and proposed that body parts which may become infected, such as teeth, be removed from incoming patents. It is widely believed, however, that patients teeth were removed to prevent them from biting staff or other patients.
Closure of the facility
In 1955, when the High Court ordered that all medical activity authorized under the series of Eugenics Laws passed in Temuair be halted until a review could be conducted, the Gliocan Asylum ceased all experiments and case studies begun by its medical staff. Though efforts were made to improve the conditions of the facility, such as converting the disused sanatorium into more patient space, conditions had not improved to any great degree. The reduced population, now approximately 800, did serve to reduce overcrowding, but no real effort was made to provide amenities to people who were not considered "worthy of life."
In 1960, the High Court ruled that the Eugenics Laws were a violation of the Articles of Governance and must be repealed. What followed was the "Care Act" which stipulated how treatment of mentally disabled persons must be handled. The administration of the Gliocan Asylum were informed that conditions must be improved or the facility would be shut down. Efforts were made, but a lack of funding, as well as a general apathy by the staff, resulted in very little actual improvement. In 1964, an investigation by the Imperial Ministry of Health and Human Services discovered that the conditions had not been improved, resulting in the arrest of the facilities medical director, Doctor Afonso Caira. Dr Caira was the first person to be arrested and tried for violations of the 1960 Care Act. The trial brought the conditions of the Gliocan Asylum onto the international stage, and the facility was visited by personnel from several international aid organizations, as well as reporters from around the world.
The facility was ordered closed in 1966 due to a lack of funding and because of the reputation it had received during Doctor Caira's trial. During that time, many people traveled to the island illegally to tour the facility and take pictures of the deteriorating building. In 1979, the entire facility was transferred to the ParaCell Corporation when they took possession of Esperamos Illa. The entire facility was covered into a research hospital and continues to be utilized by ParaCell.
Medical Experiments
A series of medical experiments on the variety of ailments, including hepatitis, gonorrhea, syphilis, and meningitis, were conducted between 1891 and 1955. It was common for both the asylum patients, as well as those at the leprosarium, to be used in experimentation. In most cases, these experiments were conducted with knowledge and permission of the Imperial government.
- Between 1914 and 1916, the Imperial Army provided quantities of mustard gas for testing purposes. Around 150 patients were purposefully exposed to mustard gas during these trails.
- Doctor Paulo Arra, in 1921, injected 6 mental patients, 3 males and 3 females, all under the age of 18, with syphilis. This was intended as a long term study to chart the effects of the disease on the patients. The patients were not told they had been infected with syphilis. The progress of the disease was charted and examined over the course of the patients life. Even when penicillin became widely available in 1947, the treatment was not administered to the patients. The study ran from 1921 until 1957, when the last patient succumbed to the disease. Doctor Arra was arrested by Imperial Marshals in 1961 when the fact that he did not provide treatment to the sole surviving test subject when the High Court ordered all ongoing eugenics practices and case studies terminated was brought to light.
- From 1930 onward, various test runs of experimental immunization compounds were administered to patients and their progress recorded. Many of these compounds are still used today against such ailments as, typhus, tuberculosis, as well as typhoid and yellow fever.
- A series of tests conducted in the 1940's showed that at least 50 patients had been infected with viral hepatitis. The purpose of the tests was to test various treatments of the virus in the hopes of developing a vaccine.
- From 1942 to 1943, researchers used a special low-pressure chamber constructed to test the effects of high altitude ejection on pilots. Patients were placed in the chamber and exposed to conditions simulating altitudes of up to 20,000 m (66,000 ft). This study was commissioned by the Imperial Air Force.
- From 1942-1944, Doctor Vitor Patino injected meningococcus bacteria directly into the spines of 16 children, some of whom were taken from the sanatorium, to purposefully introduce meningitis in the subjects. He then charted the progress of the disease and attempted to treat it with several compounds of his own devising. These experiments wee not condoned by the Imperial Ministry of Heath as they "served no medical purpose, given that a suitable treatment for meningitis, namely, sulfadiazine, was in common usage." Doctor Patino was arrested by Imperial Marshals in 1945 and convicted of 16 counts of manslaughter. The court ruled that, because the patients had been "mentally defective", he could not be tired for murder. Doctor Patino was sentenced to 32 years in prison, 2 years for each patients who died during his experiments.
- From 1942 through the end of 1943, in a study commissioned by Ioc, several patients were purposefully wounded or otherwise injured to test the effects of sulfonamide, a synthetic antimicrobial agent which was to be used in the treatment of several ailments, including gas gangrene and tetanus. Wounds would be inflicted on the patients, and then aggravated by having foreign objects, such as glass or wood shavings, ground into the wounds, or the blood circulation would be interrupted by tying off blood vessels at both ends to simulate a battlefield wound. Sulfonamide would then be administered and the recovery of the patient recorded.
- In 1944, several experiments intended to produce drinkable seawater were undertaken. 30 Lepers were given nothing but seawater to drink for a period of 3 weeks.
Doctor Jose Vallin
Doctor Jose Vallin was assigned as a physician to the Gliocan Asylum from 1925 until 1951, one of the longest serving doctors in the facility. He is known to have conducted more than 50 different studies involving human experimentation, including bone, muscle, and nerve regeneration, which was of great interest to the Armed Forces of the Temuair Empire. Often these experiments were simply the removal of bone, muscle of tissue from patients and a study of the bodies natural regenerative abilities.
The facility on Esperamos Illa, due to its antarctic climate, was uniquely suited to experiments involving cold weather and its effects on the human body. One avenue of research was hypothermia prevention, including the testing of protective garments against extreme cold. The results of these experiments were also of interest to the Imperial Air Force, whose early pilots faced severe cold at higher altitudes.
Doctor Vallin was heavily involved in the search for a vaccine and treatment of malaria. Not unlike Doctor Patino, his research focused on developing and testing various treatments to malaria. This included infecting otherwise healthy patients via infected mosquitoes. Unlike Doctor Patino's research, however, the Imperial Ministry of Health and Human Services ruled the work was vital to the advancement of medical science, and allowed his work to continue, despite the fact that Doctor Vallin personally admitted he was merely interested in the monetary compensation that would be available to any man who managed to find a cure for malaria. His efforts, however, were ultimately unsuccessful.
Experiments in mass sterilization
Being a leading proponent of forced sterilization of the invalid and mentally disabled, Doctor Vallin put considerable effort into sterilization research. The "Purity of Reproduction Law" of 1926 legalized the involuntary sterilization was people who met certain criteria, including
- Persons with diseases believed to be hereditary
- Persons with physical deformities or aliments such as blindness, deafness,
- Persons considered to be "weak minded", specifically, those suffering from Intellectual disabilities
- Persons suffering from alcohol or substance addiction
- Persons having been convicted of a felony crime and sentenced to prison.
The purpose of Doctor Vallin's sterilization experiments were to discover was to sterilize multiple people with minimal waste of time, effort and resources. Doctor Vallin focused his research experiments on the use X-ray radiation, surgery and various drugs. Between 1926 and 1955, when the High Court ordered a halt to all practices under the Eugenics Laws until a review was completed, over 3,500 people were rendered sterile by Doctor Vallin's various experiments, Side effects among patients were numerous, and many women went on to suffer vaginal bleeding, severe abdominal pain, and cervical cancer after they were injected with an experimental sterilization solution containing iodine and silver nitrate.
Radiation exposure was determined to be the most efficient method for mass sterilization and, between 1930 and 1955, over 150,000 people across the Empire were rendered sterile as a result of the forced sterilization programs. Many of these people also suffered severe radiation burns as a result of the process.
Speculation of paranormal activity
The Gliocan Asylum is home to an abundance of ghost stories or other paranormal sightings. Reports of paranormal activity, such as flickering lights, the appearance of apparitions, and unexplained noises such as footprints, clanking chains, and slamming doors, within the facility were reported and recorded as early as 1907 and persist to this day. Many of these reports occurred between the 1966 closure of the facility and its acquisition by ParaCell in 1979, when many people traveled to the island illegally, some of which losing their lives in the process, to tour the facility and take pictures. According to many visitors, the buildings seemed to decay and deteriorate at a rate far faster than would be expected." Several cases of disappearances or suspicious deaths have also been reported throughout the years, though many of these are dismissed as the work of staff members abusing patients or removing eliminated patients after medical experiments were completed.