After earning his bachelor's degree from the University of Oregon in 1957, Ken Kesey went on to study creative writing at Stanford University under some of America's most famous authors. In the course of his second year, he met a young graduate student named Vik Lovell, who introduced him to experiments involving the use of mind-altering drugs that were being conducted locally at the Veterans' Hospital in Menlo Park. After serving as a paid subject for the duration of the experiments, Kesey accepted a job as a night attendant on the hospital's psychiatric ward. During the long hours from dusk until dawn, often aided by drugs such as LSD, he began writing One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, his most renowned work.
A brief history of the American mental institution. For generations one of the most perturbing questions plaguing American society has been the matter of caring for its mentally ill. From the arrival of the nation's first settlers and continuing well into the middle of the nineteenth century, early attempts at treating such disorders often bordered on the grounds of cruel and unusual punishment; it was not uncommon to find those persons afflicted with the illness to be chained to a wall or locked up in a cellar or attic.
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