[Fortune and misfortune of the cemetery of the lunatics of Cadillac].

The psychiatric hospitals run by the French "Départements", which were created under the Law of 30 June 1838, in the past constituted places of exclusion, as the life of their inmates would often come to an end inside the institution itself. Therefore, the asylums often held their own "cemeteries of the lunatics", as a number of defuncts would not be claimed by their families. The present study describes the history of the Centre hospitalier de Cadillac-sur-Garonne (Département de la Gironde) and of its cemetery of the insane. Used from 1922 to 2000, this cemetery has today 895 visible tombs, containing 898 defuncts, 161 being anonymous and 737 being identified by nominative plates (638 men, 110 women). Most often they are burial places in open ground topped by a simple iron cross. The study of the Cadillac registers of deaths, communal as well as in the hospital, let us believe that, in fact, more than 2000 patients rest in this cemetery which is forgotten by the Authorities and has been seriously deteriorated. The end of the confinement into a mental hospital caused the cemetery falling into disuse. All that asks us a question about the way Society, in times past, treated the many patients deceased in the French psychiatric hospitals, especially during the Second World War.