Rage Against the Cage

The cage looks like a dog kennel, but it's bolted onto the posts of a narrow hospital bed. When a psychiatric patient is judged to be in need of restraint, orderlies bundle him into the bed and lock tight the cage — causing some mentally unstable patients to howl with fear. Barbaric? The practice has been criticized by the E.U. But it has been in use in Central Europe since the Habsburg Empire, and the Czech Republic, despite its May 1 E.U. accession, still has an estimated 2,200 caged beds in psychiatric hospitals and social-care homes.

Jan Pfeiffer...