Museum van de Geest

Het Dolhuys had been founded in 2005 in the newly renovated former old-age home known as Schoterburcht, located just across the Schotersingel from the Staten Bolwerk park.

Outsider art, located in the Amsterdam part of the museum, shows artwork created by artists who only listen to the voice within themselves.

Lepers who were not sick lived in "Akkerzieken", or homesteads in Akendam, an area north of Schoten, where they had rights to health services from the Dolhuys.

[3] Though it doubled as a home for poor children, the Dolhuys was sometimes still called "Leproos-huis" and later, "Pest-huis" when an outbreak of plague hit Haarlem in 1664.

The painter Jan de Bray lost many members of his family in that outbreak, and they were probably cared for in the Dolhuys, where he won a commission to paint the regents three years later.

In the painting by Jan de Bray of the regents of the Dolhuys, a boy with head sores is seen collecting his vuilbrief and holding a lazarus-klep or klepper (clapper), a wooden rattle that he can use to call attention and beg with.

His young age and the fact that he is unaccompanied means that he is probably an orphan inmate, who will be sent by the regents to collect money in Haarlem for their hospital.

Perhaps the most famous regent today of the medieval Dolhuys was Willem Janszoon Verwer, who kept a diary, most notably of his experiences during the siege of Haarlem from 1572 to 1581.

The Dolhuys was a charitable institution for the elderly, orphans, lepers, and other poor or sick people who could not be helped by the St. Elisabeth Gasthuis within the city walls of Haarlem.

Leprosy was misunderstood, and any disease considered fatal and contagious, such as small pox, was grouped under the header lazerij, after the story of Lazarus.

The museum is the owner of the archives of several former institutions and has a small exhibition hall for rotating shows based on their possessions, and also art from former psychiatry patients.