Having wealth is one thing. Doing something with it is what counts.
I came across this statue and what I first thought was a kind of court jester happens to be a likeness of
Philipp I. was the landgrave of Hesse, powerful and wealthy. When he was only 31 years old he founded one of the first psychiatric hospitals in the world, in 1535.
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pictures imperfect blog 
Germany has been quite ahead of the game in this area hasn’t it?
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As far as I know the first proper treatment facilities for psychiatric patients (i.e. not just incarcerating them with no or little treatment) were earlier, in Kairo, Granada, and Damaskus (make one sad in a different modern context). In Europe, proper treatment hospitals (considered proper at the time – which was on occasion horrendous horrendous but at least governed by goodwill towards patients) came later and were far and few between. As an aside, the hospital was built next to the village of Goddelau where 300 years later Georg Büchner, one of the foremost Romantic and revolutionary German writers. His best known character is Woyzeck from the play with the same name which raises a lot of questions about mental illness and how it was treated.
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