Rip Hopkins Bishop's Madness © Rip Hopkins, 1999 "Giatros thanatos" ; Doctor Death. That's how the Agiassos Sanatorium employees nick-named the doctor there from 1996 to 1997. According to these employees, the number of patients during this period fell from 122 to 77 : 45 deaths when the yearly average was 9. According to the records, this doctor prescibed his patients lethal doses of tranquilisers and sedatives. Only a few of the 45 deaths appear in the Sanatorium's records. Officially the Sanatorium is not a psychiatric hospital but the majority of the patients interned here are mentally ill. Today the 87 pensionners, blind, physically and mentally handicapped, schizophrenics and psychopaths live together in unacceptable conditions. The Sanatorium, like all the social institutions on the island of Mytilini, is headed by one of the island's three Bishops. The inhabitants of the region of Agiassos, the town outside of which the Sanatorium is situated, share strong religious beliefs, where they look up to and at the same time fear this all powerful Bishop who has control over his subjects on both spiritual and material levels. In this isolated region that operates according to feudal rules everything eminates from the Bishop, life and death. Back Next