Looking over the burial records of the 109 Yazooans buried on the grounds of the former Mississippi State Insane Asylum, their information weaves a network of stories and possibilities.
From November of 1912 until March of 1935, about 4,380 patients from the institute were buried on the grounds that now serve as the campus for the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson. Of those, 109 patients were from Yazoo County.
Those Yazooans include 52 males and 57 females, 98 African American and 11 white. The leading cause of death for those patients was tuberculosis. The second leading cause was pellagra, a vitamin deficiency. Other leading causes included cerebral hemorrhaging, heart conditions and epilepsy. Rare conditions included inflammation of the kidneys, syphilis, stomach cancer, burns and even “maniacal exhaustion.”
But looking through the records, one must ask as to whether these patients were “mentally ill?” Could their admittance to the state mental hospital simply have been an untreated or lesser-known medical condition? Was being placed inside the facility merely a way to isolate a gender or race?
Scientific research and academic studies have uncovered some surprising news when it comes to the misperceptions of mental illness.
According to an article by Dr. Sudhakar Madalasira, “The History of Mississippi Psychiatry: A Dark Past Unearthed on UMMC Grounds,” a typical patient in the mid-1800s was a woman in her 20s or 30s, normally committed by her father or husband.
Of the 109 Yazooans believed to have been buried in the asylum’s burial grounds, 57 were females. The longest tenure of any local patient during that time period was Sarah Woods, who was about 39 years old when she left Yazoo County to arrive at the place that would be her home for the next four decades. Perhaps the youngest patient admitted to the hospital from Yazoo County was that of eight-year-old Annie Henning. She passed away on Feb. 27, 1928 at the age of 15 from pellagra.
“Pregnancy and menstruation were considered exciting and predisposing causes by which women were deemed insane,” Madalasira said. “Two common explanations for insanity were ‘unlucky in business’ and ‘disappointed in love,’ but ‘feeblemindness’ was also a cause for commitment which involved an application to a local court and a testimony before a judge who issued an order.”
Expert medical witnesses were normally never contacted. And most female patients were who? Farmer wives.
But it wasn’t just females being committed to the state mental hospital. Most of the patients from Yazoo County were also African American males.
“If families refused to surrender their ‘lunatics’ to the asylum, any citizen could complain to the sheriff who could ‘bring the suspected insane to the county probate court’ where a 12-person jury decided on the commitment,” Madalasira said. “This provided an outlet for community members to commit people who were ‘stirring the pot’ whether or not suffering from mental illness.”
Could the state mental hospital merely have been a place to isolate women and minorities from society?
But another concern arose during this time as well. Left untreated, the symptoms would resemble a mental illness with delusions and hallucinations. It was labeled as the “South’s Deadly Diet,” and it killed an average of 7,000 people a year within the region. And could it have all been linked to simply a vitamin deficiency?
The second leading cause of death among the 109 patients from Yazoo County was pellagra, a vitamin deficiency. In a 2018 article “The American South’s Deadly Disease” by Kristin Baird Rattini that appeared in Discover magazine, she said cases of a mysterious disease started appearing every summer in the South during the early 1900s.
“At first, patients felt melancholy and weak,” Rattini said. “Some then developed swollen tongues and drooled excessively. As the disease advanced, people displayed a symmetrical photosensitive rash across their limbs, neck and face. Some patients’ symptoms disappeared a few months later, only to recur the following year. For others, the disease progressed through the four Ds: dermatitis, diarrhea, dementia and death.”
Left untreated, the condition could resemble a mental illness. Imagine a patient arriving at the facility with excessive drooling, hallucinations and delusions. But was it all due to poor diet and vitamin deficiency? And could it have all been linked to…corn?
The campaign to uncover the cause of pellagra was Dr. Joseph Goldberger. He first examined the theory that the condition was caused by flies, and he found flaws in that theory. But there was something alarming to Goldberger about diseases caused by dietary deficiencies. Was the cause of pellagra a corn-based diet?
“The grain had only recently become a popular foodstuff,” said Rattini. “As ‘King Cotton’ and textile mills came to dominate the South’s post-Civil War economy, many families converted all their farmland to cotton. They stopped planting vegetables and keeping livestock. As a result, many poor Southerners now ate almost exclusively what was called the three Ms: low-quality meat, molasses and meal (industrially refined cornmeal) — the same cheap gruel often served at orphanages and asylums. Pellagra was most widespread among populations subsisting on the three Ms.”
Now deemed unethical, Goldberger conducted a controversial experiment to connect pellagra to diet.
“In 1915, with pardons in hand from Mississippi’s progressive governor, Goldberger recruited 12 healthy volunteers at the Rankin State Prison Farm to eat the three Ms diet,” Rattini said. “Within the six-month trial period, six volunteers exhibited the telltale dermatitis. Goldberger was convinced he had proven the link between the Southern poverty diet and pellagra.”
Could the cornbread, fat meat and molasses often found on Southern dinner tables been the culprit? But it wasn’t just a corn-based diet. Consider other cultures that consumed a similar diet, such as Native American tribes. But it was the way the corn was processed. The vitamin deficiency responsible for causing pellagra was found to be nicotinic acid or niacin. Researchers soon discovered that niacin cured pellagra in humans. Native American tribes knew that, to some extent, by their methods of cooking and seeping of corn.
Rattini said Goldberger was finally publicly vindicated in 1927.
“That spring, the Mississippi River flooded, to devastating effect,” Rattini said. “The potential for a widespread pellagra outbreak surged in flood-ravaged areas of Tennessee, Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi. Goldberger oversaw the Red Cross’ distribution of 12,000 pounds of brewer’s yeast in those areas. That effort cured most pellagrins within six to 10 weeks, prevented untold thousands more cases and earned Goldberger the recognition that was long overdue — though he wouldn’t enjoy it for long.”
Goldberger passed away in 1929 when pellagra cases started to decline.
“The Red Cross carried on his work; by 1937 it had distributed 500,000 pounds of brewer’s yeast — frequently referred to as Vitamin G for Goldberger,” Rattini said. “That year, researchers identified niacin (abundant in brewer’s yeast) as the elusive P-P factor, and doctors established a standard dosage and therapy. Niacin has since become a dietary staple, now better known for fighting high cholesterol than pellagra.”
The truth behind the 109 Yazooans buried in the asylum’s burial grounds may never truly be uncovered. But thanks to the research of professionals and volunteers, we have more than just their patient numbers. We have their dates of admission. We have their causes of death and perhaps the reasons behind their commitment. We have small glimpses of how mental illnesses was handled.
But, most importantly, we have their names.
“The discovery of the coffins on UMMC campus should not only poignantly impel clinicians and the public alike to view these humans as unfortunate people caught in the throes of primitive psychiatric care and the societal biases surrounding mental illness but to also effect societal changes from the lessons learned,” said Madakasira.
