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32 A LUNATIC VIIXAGE.
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Nected Happy Or Not With As Is We The A ...
maniac , who suddenly burst into _^ a violent fit of fuiy . She was in great _dangerbut lier presence of niind was greater still . Her child
P whom ° PP ecl the it into madman , his hands loved and , was ran in out her of arms the at door the and moment round ; to she a ,
window , whence she looked into the room . The madman , had put the infant on the floor and was quietly playing with it ! One must
go to Gheel to find such trusting mothers , and such docile maniacs ! Nevertheless , nobody there blamed her for her instinctive and true
calculation of the power of her child . When the patients are young , a lively friendship springs up between themand the little Gheelois .
; In one family was placed a deaf and dumb girl , likewise out of her senses . For the daughters of the house she is become a necessary
companion and sister . If you were to enter the room where they sit working together , and announce that you had come to fetch the
patient back to the Asylum , you would see them all take to flight like young birds , _drag-ging off their friend in . aflriht .
Public sentiment takes even a more poetical and g religious form . Full of faith in . the legends of Gheel , the people think themselves
gifted with a sort of special power over the insane . Esquirol expressed one day to a peasant his fears for the safety of the
nourriciers in cases of maniacal fury . His hearer laughed at his apprehensions and said , "You don't know what those peo _23 le are like . I am
not a strong * man , yet the worst among them is nothing to me . " Thus think and speak all the Gheelois ; and the tradition of physical
and moral domination spreads even to the insane , and acts oh their imaginations powerfully when they are in the least capable of
entertaining an idea . On the other hand , pride in showing a well-fed and flourishing patientand desire to stand hih the list of
authorized nourriciers prevent , power from degenerating gupon into oppression . To be erased from this list would be a disgrace to a Gheelois .
It speaks _Yexy ill for political parties in Belgium that tricks and bribes have occasionally been practised _uj 3 on the peasantsand a
good or wealthy patient been allotted as the price of a good vote , and a troublesome patient as punishment for an unfavorable one . But , it
speaks well for the heart of the people that their inmates rarely suffered in consequence . The possibility of this abuse is now done
. away with . Of the kindness and delicacy constantly met with among them ,
Dr . Parigot gives the following touching example . A beautiful woman , who appeared to have received a refined educationwas
found in Brussels in a state of insanity , without any one being , able to discover her antecedents . By her own vague and disjointed
answers , she had been born in the Isle of France , where her father had been engaged in affairs connected with the revolution in the
mother country . This poor lady was sent to Gheel , and entrusted to a farmer in easy circumstanceswho received her with a
defe-, rence proportioned to his ideas of her former rank . For twenty
years she dined alone , seated at a little table covered with a white
32 A Lunatic Viixage.
32 A LUNATIC VIIXAGE .
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Citation
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English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), March 1, 1861, page 32, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01031861/page/32/
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