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T H U R S D A Y

Mental-health reformer Dorothea Dix, who established 32 mental hospitals in the U.S., had high hopes for Thomas Sessford, the first patient who entered St. Elizabeths Hospital upon its opening in 1855. Though she and her followers did much good, some problems turned out to be intransigent, and Sessford died at St. E’s, uncured. The mixed legacy of such good intentions is the subject of Asylum, Sarah Patton and Sarah Mondale’s 1988 documentary, which discusses the evolution of American psychiatric care by examining 130 years in the history of the institution that came to hold Ezra Pound and John Hinckley Jr. Rutgers Medicine professor Dr. Gerald Grob, who appears in the film, introduces it at 8 p.m. at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center’s National Museum of Health and Medicine, Georgia Ave. & Elder St. NW. FREE. (202) 782-2200. (MJ)