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Modern Persecution, or Insane Asylums Unveiled

From: Modern Persecution
Creator: Elizabeth P. W. Packard (author)
Date: 1873
Source: Available at selected libraries
Figures From This Artifact: Figure 1  Figure 2  Figure 3  Figure 4  Figure 5  Figure 6  Figure 7  Figure 8  Figure 9  Figure 10  Figure 11  Figure 12  Figure 13  Figure 14  Figure 15  Figure 16

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Page 41:

815  

You seem determined not to do so. If yon carry out this determination, you will meet as you deserve to receive, Pharaoh's destruction.

816  

You can, like him, try to ease your troubled conscience by the sophism -- these are only the ravings of insanity. But, sir, they are not. They are the words of "truth and soberness," such as you will have to meet at God's bar; and I shall there witness against you, that I did faithfully warn you of your coming certain doom.

817  

If I felt there was any hope, by appealing to your humanity, I might plead that, if you could be so reckless to your own interests, as to disregard this appeal, could you not, out of pity to your humane wife, and your innocent children, spare them the disgrace of your own iniquities being visited upon them.

818  

Repentance -- dealing justly -- returning to their friends, the many, many individuals here, whom you unjustly, illegally retain, years and years, when you have no right to them a single day, is your only refuge.

819  

Oh! the agonies of bereavement, hopeless -- which you are alone responsible for in God's sight, and will soon be found to be in man's sight also!

820  

Your prison-bound captives, now objects of your contempt and utter criminal indifference, you are destined to see rising and applauded as the world's reformers -- while you are destined to sink into oblivion, and your name to rot, unless you repent.

821  

The little stone of truth, cut out of the mountain without hands, and wielded by one, whom you may try to stigmatize as insane, will cause your overthrow, unless you repent.

822  

I defy all your attempts to make me out an insane person. You cannot do it. My life is hid with Christ in God, where neither you nor devils can harm it. It is absolutely beyond your power to harm me. And all your attempts to do so, will be only working out your more speedy destruction.

823  

Dr. Samington, the Methodist minister, in Manteno, is not the only person who will decide upon your qualifications for your position, by your decision respecting me. As he intimated, the man who would call me an insane person was not fit for his place. Perhaps it was for this very thing I was sent here, to let the State see that Dr. McFarland has yet to learn the very alphabet of his profession. To let the fact appear, that you are so insane yourself, that you cannot tell a sane from an insane person!

824  

Now just test your transcendental machinery and power to make out a case of insanity, of so occult a nature, that no being in the universe has ever had any evidence of its existence on any plane whatever, either physical, mental, moral or spiritual.

825  

I make my boast of a sound mind, in as nearly as sound a physical organization, as the civilized world can produce. I am a monument for the age, that a healthy organization can be maintained, by a strict conformity to the laws of nature.

826  

I am also a monument for the age -- a standing miracle, almost -- of the power of faith to shield one from insanity, by having come out unharmed, through a series of trials, such as would crush into a level with the beasts, I may say, any one, who did not freely use this antidote.

827  

Besides, Dr. McFarland, there are others in this institution, that have now become alike invulnerable. They are protected by a spiritual power that is invincible, and all your skillfully worked machinery for making maniacs, cannot make maniacs of them. As your friend, I advise you to beware! There be more for us, than there are against us.

828  

You are the weak party. You had better make us your friends, by deserving our friendship. There is an influence indicated by the "wrath of the Lamb," which is dreadful to cope with. Let pure spiritual woman become exasperated beyond her powers of endurance, yea, until forbearance ceases to be a virtue, and I pity her adversary then.

829  

"We are merciful and forgiving in our natures; but, Dr. McFarland, there is a point beyond which our forgiveness is impossible. Then is the time for you to fear her artillery. Let the prayer of the righteous be offered, that God will verify his promise contained in these words, "Vengeance is mine, I will repay," and woe then to that power, which has Omnipotence for its adversary!

830  

Dr. McFarland, you may think I am severe. But they are only the "wounds of a friend." I do want to respect and love you. But I cannot, unless you will exhibit some humanity. I cannot love an inhuman man. I do not think you are, now, altogether inhuman. But I do think you are fast becoming so, by restraining all manifestations of sympathy and humanity towards your patients.

831  

You not only seem to feel that it is wrong to treat us with the least degree of humanity, but even unreasonable, irrational, unnatural, and even the most uncivil conduct seems to you, as the most likely course to awaken the opposite virtue, in us. It appears to us, that the more unnatural, the more perverted, the more insane treatment you can secure to us, the more reason we have to expect to become sane and reasonable ourselves.

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