| Description |
The program -- and the series -- is introduced by explanation of the cage in the title of the series. The cage symbolizes the restraints, chains, cells and prisons in which the mentally ill were kept by societies ignorant and afraid of the true nature of insanity. It also represents the progress man has made in freeing the mentally ill from these restraints as more has been learned about this problem. This program outlines the history of the treatment of insanity from earliest times through the end of the middle ages. The narrator, Mr. Stephen Palmer, describes some of the misapprehensions about insanity, some of the ways the ancient Greeks and Romans treated it, and what happened to classical thought on the subject after the fall of the Roman Empire. The influence of the rise of the Roman Catholic Church, the belief in angels, devils and magic, the methods used by the Holy Inquisition to cure madness are presented in the narration: pictures, statues, and old engravings are all used.
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