Mental asylum restraint. This device was used to restrain the insane in mental asylums. Photographed at the Fool Tower, in Vienna, Austria. Also called the Madhouse Tower (Narrenturm), the Fool Tower, which was constructed in 1784, was one of the first psychiatric hospitals. It was closed as a hospital in 1866, and since 1971 the site has been occupied by a pathology and anatomy museum. This photograph, which was taken in the period from the 1890s to the 1930s, is from the Bain News Service, one of the USA's earliest news picture libraries.