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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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"In my last report I alluded to the circumstance that non-residents and foreigners were better provided for by law than our own citizens.

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I wish again to call to your attention the fact, that in a few years, under our present law, these classes will form a majority of our inmates.

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They are never removed but by death, or when recovered; consequently the number of incurables is constantly increasing.

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The inquiry may be an important one, whether non-residents and foreigners found insane in our cities and towns, should not come under the same previsions for support as when they become chargable from any other cause.

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Or, what might be better still, perhaps, whether our own poor should not be placed on a footing as favorable as that enjoyed by the nonresident and the foreigner.

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All such provisions are liable to be abused, but if the legislature should authorize the admission of indigent, insane persons, within sixty days of the attack, at one dollar per week, for such time as the trustees and superintendent shall think proper, or until recovered, an amount of benefit would be realized from this institution hitherto unapproached. Such a provision would fill the house with recent cases, in the best condition to be benefitted by a residence in it."

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Now, citizens, whether you are native or foreign, Catholic or Protestant, will you after the above appeal of Dr. Bates for the incarceration of your respective countrymen in his infernal pit of woe, and for the purpose of having a larger number to experiment upon with his terrible drugs, more fiendish and cruel than the assassin's stiletto or the hangman's knot, I ask you, will you suffer such tyranny to reign in your boasted land of liberty ? the home of the brave, the land of the free; or will you crush it at the ballot box and by legislative enactment ? I think that if I have not related enough cases of abuse to satisfy the public of the enormities committed at that hospital, that they would not believe should one arise from the dead, and come forth clothed in the pure garments of the Heavenly spirits and proclaim them with the trumpet of Gabriel. If they doubt my word, call me crazy, insane, or a fool, all I ask of them is to appoint a committee of disinterested men; men who are not physicians, for the truth in relation to that institution cannot be laid before the public if it has to pass through the doctor's hand, as they all know the objects of the hospital, and will conceal all abuses which are committed by physicians. These are true, and I wish the people so to understand it. One of the committee of investigation has said that he did not see how Dr. Simonton could make such a report as he did, with such testimony as he had before him. I can tell him that it was because he was a doctor, and was determined that the real facts should not be known to the public.

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Many people, who are ignorant in regard to insanity and insane people imagine there must be something very peculiar in the qualifications of a physician to be competent to have the care of such persons at an Insane Hospital, and having been under the care of four of them I am ready to admit such to be the case, if those are a fair specimen of what all ought to be. For instance, Dr's Ray and Smith are perfectly cruel monsters, and Dr. Bates is a tyranical, overbearing, inhuman political demagogue, who cares for none but himself; and Dr. Harlow has received his medical diploma, and is a sap head, and any boy who has been one year in an apothecary store would answer every purpose that he is capable of filling as assistant physician, and any person who knew him would never allow him to prescribe for them. -- However, he makes a very good automaton for Dr. Bates.

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As to the attendants or the nurses who have the immediate care of the patients, and upon whose attention greatly depends the restoration of the insane to their reason, almost any thing in human form will answer; if such as have generally been employed at the Maine Insane Hospital are competent, the most important qualification is to be able to throw or knock them down, and seize them by the throat and choke them until they subdue them, or put them into the shower box or cold bath, and drench them with cold water until they are so completely exhausted that they can make no more noise, when they are put to bed until they recover from such horrid attentions as they receive from those whom the public suppose to be wholly devoted to their service, in humane and charitable acts. Such is the real treatment they receive, and nothing is done, or permitted to be done, to relieve them of horrid mental or physical sufferings. They are led to believe themselves prisoners -- prisoners without hope or consolation.

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There is one point to which I wish to call the attention of the public in relation to insane persons, and that is about their being conscious of what passes around them. If they have a brain fever or are imbecile, they will not be likely to know what occurs in their presence, but nearly all other classes of insane persons will have a perfect recollection of every occurrence, and will relate scenes and conversation with as much precision as they ever could; and be, in fact, as capable of testifying to whatever passes in their presence as they were before they were insane, in every thing, except what relates to their own particular delusions; and whenever a person who has been in any Insane Hospital complains of being abused, or makes any statements in relation to what they have seen or heard, if they were persons of truth and veracity before their insanity, they can invariably be relied upon for the correctness of their assertions after they return to the world. There is one more point to consider, which I wish the public to understand in relation to the course pursued by Reuel Williams in trying to crush me as he did, and the investigation of all the other charges seperate from my own case, which is, that if he had not been guilty of conniving at the abusive treatment which I received, he should and would have demanded a full and thorough investigation of every charge, whether I were a sane or an insane man, and by so doing he would have washed his own hands from any participation in such barbarous iniquity as I trust will now cleave to him forever.

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