Partisan politics being what they are, the cooperation last year between Gov. Jennifer Granholm and the Republican-controlled state Legislature on a plan to bring a Toyota Research & Development facility to York Township says something about how badly Michigan needs new jobs.

After a West Bloomfield-based developer intent on building a subdivision outbid Toyota for some state-owned land south of Ann Arbor - the site of an old mental hospital - the state threw out both bids. The Legislature then passed a bill to allow the land's sale directly to Toyota. Though the developer sued the state, it appears construction on the Toyota facility will begin as early as this spring.

Quietly lying behind the debate and excitement surrounding the Toyota facility, though, is the history of that land. Ypsilanti State Hospital was practically a small city at its peak in the mid-1950s, with a staff of nearly 1,000, 4,000 mentally ill patients, its own chapel, even a nine-hole golf course.

Today the site sits abandoned, its buildings largely gutted in preparation for their final demolition. Urban explorers and curious passerby who ignore the "No Trespassing" signs and venture through the open doorways will certainly find peeling paint and leaking roofs, birds flying about indoors and rooms of abandoned filing cabinets and kitchen equipment. They might not, however, have a sense for the scale of the human suffering that existed within its walls.

The story of Ypsilanti State Hospital mirrors the history of the treatment of the mentally ill during the 20th century. When the hospital was built, effective treatments were few, and mental hospitals were little removed from the insane asylums of the 19th century.

The state Legislature authorized construction of "a hospital for the human, curative, scientific and economic treatment of insane persons to be known as the Ypsilanti State Hospital" in 1931. The buildings were designed by Albert Kahn, the architect of dozens of buildings on campus, including Angell Hall and Hill Auditorium. The first six patients were admitted on June 15, 1931, and by 1932, the hospital was spending 80 cents a day on each of its more than 900 patients.

The diary of Dr. O.R. Yoder, the hospital's longtime medical superintendent, shows the effects of the Great Depression that gripped the nation back then. On July 2, 1931, he wrote, "Were constantly stopped by hundreds of people seeking work. Several thousand applications on file." Later that month, the Ypsilanti Savings Bank closed its doors, and the doctor was left with $1.75 in his pocket.

In the hospital's early days, there were no anti-depressants or anti-psychotics. Psychiatrists generally relied on Freudian talk therapy. The type of patient who wound up in Ypsilanti State Hospital, however, was often too ill to benefit from talking. For these patients, there were a variety of bodily treatments, ranging from the benign to the bizarre.

Patients on "hydrotherapy" were given warm baths or wrapped in cold, wet sheets. "Physiotherapy" consisted of exposure to ultraviolet and infrared light. Those patients suffering from psychosis due to the end stages of syphilis were given heavy metals to ingest or deliberately infected with malaria. Before antibiotics, poisoning or life-threatening fever were the only options to kill the microorganism that causes syphilis.

Because schizophrenia and epilepsy rarely occur in the same individual, it was reasoned that causing seizures might treat schizophrenia. In 1937, two "shock" therapies, using insulin or a drug called metrazol to induce seizures, were introduced at Ypsilanti State Hospital. Metrazol induced seizures so intense that patients often fractured their spines. Electroshock therapy was introduced around this time as well.

These treatments were not particularly effective. In the 10th anniversary issue of Ypsi Slants, the newsletter published by some of the more able patients as part of their therapy, an article titled "Charter Guests Still Among Us" reported on patients who had been in the hospital since 1931. Of the first six people admitted to the hospital 10 years before, one was still a patient; the other five had died without getting better.

Crumbling copies of Ypsi Slants kept in the Bentley Historical Library provide a glimpse into the lives of the more highly functional patients. In addition to listing the scores of intramural softball games and providing compelling reporting on the prize cows in the hospital's dairy, the newsletter contained something of a society column about the patients:

"Harry Lemmer of Ward B 2-1 is losing his expert touch with cards. He has lost 12 straight games. His friends say he needs a little practice. They are all eager to help him practice."