Establishment and early years The initial steps towards establishing an asylum for the mentally ill in Kansas can be traced back to the territorial legislature's act of 1855. This act provided legal guardians for those deemed to have an "unsound mind" and, beginning in 1859, "habitual drunkards". Guardians were tasked with managing the estates of their wards and reporting to judicial authorities. Kansas Hospital for the Insane, which was also known as the State Insane Asylum or the State Lunatic Asylum, officially opened on November 1, 1866, and admitted it first patient on November 5 of that year. The first building was a small, two-story renovated farmhouse called "The Lodge" and housed only 10–12 patients. Dr. Charles O. Gause, a proponent of rehabilitation and "
moral treatment", assumed the role of the first superintendent, with his wife, Levisa, serving as the matron. Dr. Uhls resigned from the hospital in 1913 to establish a new hospital in
Overland Park, Kansas. ==See also==