Stairway to Light
(1945)
This Passing Parade series entry tells the story of Dr. Phillipe Pinel (1745-1826), a French physician. When he was assigned to a government institution for the mentally ill, he was appalled at the conditions he found. People were treated like animals, chained in dark basement cells for decades. Dr. Pinel treated the patients with kindness and understanding. His then-unorthodox methods became the model for treating those with mental illness. Written by David Glagovsky