A few years before, in 1907, Porfirio Díaz had gone to that same land to place the first stone of a project whose design and construction, the government had publicly tendered in A national contest that had as a winner a young military engineer who had all the government's support: Porfirio Díaz Ortega.
That first of September, Hundreds of guests toured the pavilions of a building that showed how Mexico left in the past the scientific backwardness And it was placed along with the modern nations, worrying about the mental health and well -being of the insane, but also reveals another fact between lines: the country had been transformed in such a way that the population suffered those effects and manifested them through mental disorders. At the time of its inauguration, the general asylum was the only one in the hemisphere and the best of the American continent.
Maintaining contact with nature and being away from the bustling city was part of the treatments inside the CastañedaCasasola, Photo Library, INAH
Treatments before the Castañeda
Since the novohispana era, In Mexico there were institutions that sought the treatment of mental illnesses, mainly in two hospitals located in the city center: The San Hipólito hospital, founded by Fray Bernardino Álvarez in 1567, gave treatment to men insane and melancholic. On the other hand, the Hospital del Divino Salvador or 'La Canoa' was founded in 1687 to give asylum to women with mental disorders and was in the care of different religious orders. It was these institutions that, through spiritual remedies around the Catholic religion, tried to do something for these people who had lost reason at some point in their lives.
As soon as the parties were completed by the inauguration of the general asylum and all guests from the San Hipólito and Divine Salvador hospital were moved to the new facilities «Now on the outskirts of the city,» to continue their treatments, but now under the roof of scientific modernity.