New conceptions of understanding the emotions developed in the first two decades of the 21st century make it possible to develop new research programmes in humanities and social sciences that take into account the elements of material culture and the social environment in building up emotional experience. From this point of view, this article uses historical ontology tools to analyse one of the hospitals for incurable, chronic and elderly patients in Madrid in the 19th century, characterising it as an emotional space, i.e.: those where emotion management is the main medical practice. To this end, we will analyse the theoretical proposals made by Durand-Fardel and Charcot on the treatment of this type of condition. We will use Erving Goffman’s concepts of framework and framed space as an explanatory tool to enable us to understand the task of structuring the emotional experience put in place, which will allow us to define conceptual tools to support the reinterpretation of the available sources from a new perspective.