Lunatic asylum in the context of "Arkham Asylum"

Henry Reed Rathbone (July 1, 1837 – August 14, 1911) was a United States military officer and lawyer who was present at the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln; Rathbone and his fiancée Clara Harris were sitting with Lincoln and Lincoln's wife Mary Todd Lincoln when the president was shot by John Wilkes Booth at Ford's Theatre.

When Rathbone attempted to apprehend Booth, Booth stabbed and seriously wounded him. Rathbone may have played a part in Booth's leg injury. His mental state deteriorated afterwards, and in 1883, he killed his wife, Clara; he was declared insane and lived the rest of his life in a lunatic asylum.

The Monastery of Saint Paul de Mausole (French: monastère Saint-Paul-de-Mausole) is a former Roman Catholic 11th—century Benedictine monastery in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, Provence, France. It was later administered by the Order of Saint Francis in 1605.

Several rooms of the building have been converted into a museum to honor the famed Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh, who stayed there in 1889–1890 at a time when the monastery had been converted to a lunatic asylum. Van Gogh created many paintings here, including the well-known The Starry Night.

The Scream is an art composition created by Norwegian artist Edvard Munch in 1893. The Norwegian name of the piece is Skrik ('Scream'), and the German title under which it was first exhibited is Der Schrei der Natur ('The Scream of Nature'). The agonized face in the painting has become one of the most iconic images in art, seen as representing a profound experience of existential dread related to the human condition. Munch's work, including The Scream, had a formative influence on the Expressionist movement.

Munch recalled that he had been out for a walk at sunset when suddenly the setting sun's light turned the clouds "a blood red". He sensed an "infinite scream passing through nature". Scholars have located the spot along a fjord path overlooking Oslo and have suggested various explanations for the unnaturally orange sky, ranging from the effects of a volcanic eruption to a psychological reaction by Munch to his sister's commitment at a nearby lunatic asylum.

Alfred Binet (/bɪˈneɪ/; French: [binɛ]; 8 July 1857 – 18 October 1911), born Alfredo Binetti, was a French psychologist who together with Théodore Simon invented the first practical intelligence test, the Binet–Simon test. In 1904, Binet took part in a commission set up by the French Ministry of Education to decide whether school children with learning difficulties should be sent to a special boarding school attached to a lunatic asylum, as advocated by the French psychiatrist and politician Désiré-Magloire Bourneville, or whether they should be educated in classes attached to regular schools as advocated by the Société libre pour l'étude psychologique de l'enfant (SLEPE) of which Binet was a member. There was also debate over who should decide whether a child was capable enough for regular education. Bourneville argued that a psychiatrist should do this based on a medical examination. Binet and Simon wanted this to be based on objective evidence. This was the beginning of the IQ test. A preliminary version was published in 1905. The full version was published in 1908, and slightly revised in 1911, just before Binet's death.

The Starry Night, often called simply Starry Night, is an oil-on-canvas painting by the Dutch Post-Impressionist painter Vincent van Gogh. Painted in June 1889, it depicts the view from the east-facing window of his asylum room at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, just before sunrise, with the addition of an imaginary village. It has been in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City since 1941, acquired through the Lillie P. Bliss Bequest. Described as a "touchstone of modern art", The Starry Night has been regarded as one of the most recognizable paintings in the Western canon.

The painting was created in mid-June 1889, inspired by the view from Van Gogh’s bedroom window at the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole asylum. The former monastery functioned as a mental asylum, where Van Gogh voluntarily admitted himself on 8 May 1889, following a mental breakdown and his infamous act of self-mutilation that occurred in late December 1888. Catering to wealthy patients, the facility was less than half full at the time of Van Gogh's admission, allowing the artist access to both a second-story bedroom and a ground-floor studio. During his year-long stay, he remained highly productive, creating Irises, a self-portrait, and The Starry Night.