In other cases of extreme symptomatology, individuals were seen as being reduced to animals by a curse; these individuals were either left on the streets or imprisoned in insane asylums. It was the latter response that eventually led to modern psychiatric hospitals. Pre-modern
Presentation
Auditory hallucinations were rethought during the enlightenment. As a result, the predominant theory in the western world beginning in the late 18th century was that auditory hallucinations were the result of a disease in the brain (e.g., mania), and treated as such. Treatments
There were no effective treatments for hallucinations at this time. Conventional thought was that clean food, water, and air would allow the body to heal itself (sanatorium). Beginning in the 16th century insane asylums were first introduced in order to remove "the mad dogs" from the streets. These asylums acted as prisons until the late 18th century. This is when doctors began the attempt to treat patients. Often attending doctors would douse patients in cold water, starve them, or spin patients on a wheel. Soon, this gave way to brain-specific treatments with the most famous examples including lobotomy, shock therapy, and branding the skull with a hot iron. Society and culture
Notable cases
Robert Schumann, a famous music composer, spent the end of his life experiencing auditory hallucinations. Schumanns diaries state that he suffered perpetually from imagining that he had the note A5 sounding in his ears. The musical hallucinations became increasingly complex.
He immediately experienced whatever the voice was saying as his own thoughts, to the exclusion of all other thoughts.And the second kind in which the voice comes after the thought appears is called echo de la pensée in French, namely thought echo.Example of thought echo:
A 32-year-old housewife complained of a mans voice. The voice would repeat almost all the patients goal-directed thinking, even banalest thoughts. The patient would think I must put the kettle on, and after a pause of not more than one second the voice would say I must put the kettle on.If categorized by patients subjective feelings about where the voices come from, audible thoughts can be either external or internal. Patients reporting an internal origin of the hallucination claim that the voices are coming from somewhere inside their body, mainly in their own heads, while those reporting an external origin feel the voice as coming from the environment. The external origins vary in the patients description:  some hear the voice in front of their ears, some attribute the ambient surrounding noise, like running water or wind, as the source. This sometimes influences patients behaviours as they believe people around them can also hear these audible thoughts, therefore they may avoid social events and public places to prevent others from hearing their thoughts. Besides, study suggests that the locus of the voice may change as the patients hallucinations develop.