Mars, Bonfire, Mountain Ash

Dr Sarah Gallup is a clinical psychologist at the California Department of State Hospitals. She also runs a podcast exploring the history of mental health care and the stories of people who lived or worked Behind the Walls of the World’s Psychiatric Hospitals. In six recent episodes she reads from Dangerous Asylums...

The day was dull, rather misty, and wet under foot, but neither too warm nor too cold for walking. I began to think (without being especially aware that I was thinking) about the place of blood in Christian iconography, about the chapel in which I was raised, which seemed mildly obsessed with it...