Westborough – The Westborough Public Library will celebrate the publication of “Westborough State Hospital” with a lecture by the author, Katherine Anderson, on Thursday, Aug. 1, at 7 p.m. in the Meeting Room.
The public is invited to hear award-winning author and asylum historian Katherine Anderson discuss her newest Images of America book on the history of the Westborough State Hospital. Anderson has been photographing and researching the hospital for nearly a decade and will present a collection of images, artifacts, and little known facts about the hospital. As a bonus, also present will be Mimi Baird, author of He Wanted the Moon which is about her father’s story of his time as a patient at Westborough.
The Westborough State Hospital, formerly known as the Westborough Insane Hospital, was the second homeopathic hospital for the insane in the United States. Its unique treatment methods were at the forefront of mental health care until it closed its doors as one of the last Massachusetts state hospitals in 2010. Solomon Carter Fuller, a pioneering African American pathologist, studied physical changes in the brain due to Alzheimer’s at the hospital, which was also the only New England state hospital with a dedicated unit for deaf and hard of hearing patients.
The Westborough Public Library is located at 55 West Main St.