The Journal of Mental Science printed this floorplan of the asylum of San Servolo in Venice, along with a key to its plan and a table of the conditions and the social background of patients being admitted. The table makes one of the common 19th-century distinctions regarding the causes of mental breakdown, into physical and moral (ie psychological) categories.

“Pellagra” is Vitamin B deficiency; onanism is masturbation; “Migliare” was a hereditary condition causing feverish inflammation of the lungs and intestines, and, it would seem, the brain.

The layout and physical fabric of asylum buildings was of huge interest to the British government as it built and recconfigured its many state institutions for the insane.

Today, the building on San Servolo is a college and conference centre, with a Museum of Mental Health within the complex.

Contemporary colour image courtesy of San Servolo International College