ALTERED STATES

摘要

Not many hospitals are notorious enough to have coined a new word in the English language, but south London's historic Bethlem Royal Hospital for the treatment of mental illness is one of them. Such were the scenes of chaos and pandemonium that once ensued from patients within its wards that from the Elizabethan period onwards, it spawned the eponymous word "bedlam." Founded in 1247, Bethlem is Europe's oldest psychiatric hospital and can note eminent personalities such as Houses of Parliament co-architect Augustus Welby Pugin and Victorian illustrative painter Richard Dadd among its former patients.