they gave cocaine to people for just about everything. They considered it the wonder drug to treat anything, from a tooth ache, depression, hang nails, just about anything. If your child had a stomach ache, you gave them some cocaine. If a person was thought to be crazy, they gave them cocaine. This is the era when CocaCola was a med, and had cocaine in it!
As you can imagine, cocaine addiction became such a big problem, that in the 1920s there was a cocaine prohibition, then eventually they made it totally illegal.
In the time period of 1907, they probably would have shot the person up with it if they considered the person to be "crazy". A kid with "behaviorial issues" wouldnt have gotten meds, but instead would have just got beatings from there parents. Back then, a beating from a belt was a okay punishment, and wasnt seen as anything wrong. If it was a adult with "behaviorial issues", there wasnt any med for them ether, they would be thrown in jail for acting out of line. There wasnt such thing as autism back then, so if you had any autism symptoms, you were considered "crazy", and thrown into a "insane asylum", were you would spend the rest of your life (very rarly did they ever let people out)
well, thats probably more then you asked, history of mental health is one of my interests
I could have sworn that they were experimenting with actual pills. The protagonists adopted father is a psychiatric doctor. I don't think wealthy children were beaten.