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Astounding Disclosures! Three Years In A Mad House

Creator: Isaac H. Hunt (author)
Date: 1851
Publisher: Isaac H. Hunt
Source: Patricia Deegan Collection
Figures From This Artifact: Figure 2  Figure 3

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Mr. Townsend, of --------, was taken sick with the dysentery, and they put him into the cold bath. I may as well state here that it was a standing rule, when a patient soiled his person or clothes, that he was to be put in the cold bath or shower bath, to cleanse him. The attendant believing Townsend to be in a state not fit for the cold bath asked for advice of Dr. Ray. He told him that he knew his duty, and to do it. The victim was put into the cold bath, and in five minutes after he was removed therefrom, the blood settled under his nails, and he shivered and shook in a most frightful manner. Dr. Ray was called, and then ordered boiled, hot potatoes, to be placed around the victim, in order to restore animal heat. This procedure, the hot potatoes, caused him to screech and scream in the most frightful manner! His person was set in a freezing position first, and then the horrid tragedy of burning him with hot potatoes terminated in the death of the victim, in the course of two or three days. The attendant says he has no doubt but the torture caused the death of Townsend, and it so shocked him that he left the institution, disgusted and horror stricken at such inhuman treatment.

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I now call upon you, Dr Isaac Ray, the Author of a work known to the scientific World as "Medical Jurisprudence of Insanity" -- a man whose reputation stands in the very front ranks of philanthropy and science, in America and Europe. You whose reputation for morality, benevolence and humanity has no superior, and which you have obtained wholly by writing that book, and your other scientific writings. You who have said to me that no secrets of that Institution were ever revealed to the world; you that left me as an incurable maniac, and would have murdered me outright, had you even supposed that I could ever come forth to the world again, clothed as I now am in the armor of reason and sanity. To you and to the public, I now say, here are a few more disclosures of your deeds of darkness: disclosures which, it I could arraign you before the proper tribunals of my country, would assign you to a longer residence than would be agreeable to so eminent a man, in a certain State institution, located at Thomaston.

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I now appeal to the people of Rhode Island, and the people of this great and mighty Government, generally; a Government whose laws convey the idea that each and every one of its Citizens, however Humble and obscure in life or circumstances, is and shall be guarded and protected in all the civil and religious liberties to which the heart of a freeman proudly aspires. To you I appeal, whether you will sanction or countenance a monster, whose deeds I have so faintly set forth -- deeds that pens and tongues cannot portray in all their horrid, savage, ferocious cruelty, and terrific fierceness. Will you consign your suffering, weak and wretched friends, to the care, control, cruelty and disposition of such a cannibal? Will you when you have read these pages forget their import? -- cease to remember their notes of truth and sad warning? Will you set me down as a false deceiver? -- idle agitator? -- a mad-man? Or will you rise in your might, armed and equipped for the abrogation and annihilation of all such monsters as this -- all such dens of cruelty and oppression, whose walls but seldom give out a note of the fearful deeds working within? Aye! there are deeds doing -- deeds have been done within many of those Institutions, that would be too full of horror for the public eye or ear!

CHAPTER VII.

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ABUSES UNDER DR. BATES.

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I am not done yet with my sad recitals of the madhouse. Here follow a few more cases that took place under the reign of the next cannibal king, Dr. Bates.

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MR. YORK, of Bangor, was kept in the lodge -- was kept there in the dead of winter, and frequently removed therefrom, in a perfect state of nudity, through the deep snow, to the main building, a distance of about ninety feet, and sometimes when it was intensely cold. What head, gentle reader, will you class this kind, humane treatment under? Answer it your-self. And again, female patients have been seen, barefooted and very thinly clad, snow six inches deep, passing between the main building and the cottage, distance the same as the lodge. Is not this very humane and kind ?

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DANIEL COLLINS, of Starks, tells his sad grievances, and says he has been shamefully abused. In what respect I have not been able to learn. I have been told that a female patient, in the cottage, was so badly burnt that her wounds required medical attention for about three months. It can be proved.

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MRS. HERBERT, an Irish woman, refused to give up her dipper when in the cottage. She was pinioned with the straps and put into the bathing tub, and three pails of cold water turned upon her. I suppose this was done merely to allay excitement, and not to punish her; of course not!

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RODNEY JENKINS, of Wales, was shamefully abused at the hospital, and requested his friends that they would cage him at home, rather than send him there, should he again be deprived of reason.

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