MY EXPERIENCES IN A
LUNATIC ASYLUM
LONDON: PRINTED BY
SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
AND PARLIAMENT STREET
MY EXPERIENCES IN A
LUNATIC ASYLUM
BY A SANE PATIENT
| ‘Let us rise and revolt against those people, Lankin. Let us war with them and smite them utterly. It is to use against these, especially, that scorn and satire were invented’ ‘And the animal you attack,’ says Lankin, ‘is provided with a hide to defend him—it is a common ordinance of nature’—M. A. Titmarsh |
London
CHATTO AND WINDUS, PICCADILLY
1879
[The right of translation is reserved]
MY EXPERIENCES IN A
LUNATIC ASYLUM.
I.
It’s a mad world, my masters.
I suppose that the motto I have affixed to the first chapter of the briefhistory of a singular personal experience is by this time an acceptedaxiom. Was it in one of Mr. Sala’s columns of gossip that I was readingthe other day of the man of the pen who commented upon the imprisonment inan asylum of a brother of his craft merely by saying, ‘What a fool he mustbe! For years I have been as mad as he, only I took care never to say so’?[Pg 2]There are odd corners in the brains of most of us, filled with queerfancies which are as well kept out of sight; eccentricities, I supposethey may be called. The man who is so ‘concentric’ as to be innocent ofpeculiarities is a companion of a dull sort. But Heaven help us all whensuch things may be called, and treated as, madness. For, if all of us wereused according to our deserts in that way, who should escape the modernsubstitutes for whipping? England would not contain the asylums thatshould be constructed, and might go far to deserve the Gravedigger’sdescription of her for Hamlet’s benefit: ‘There the men are as mad as he.’Let me go a step further. There are few of us, perhaps, who have not seensomething in our lives of the strange nervous disorders which have beengeneralised as ‘hypochondria,’ which are, in fact, I think, the differentoutcomes of a common affection—temporary exhaustion of brain. Beyond a[Pg 3]certain point it becomes delirium, the wandering of weakness which is soclosely connected with many forms of illness, both in the beginning andduring the course and recovery. When the victims of delirium may be addedto the eccentric members of society; when at any moment the certificatesof any two doctors who may be utter strangers to the patient—acting underthe instructions of friends who are frightened and perplexed, perhaps, andtry to believe that they are ‘doing for the best’ (I leave out ofconsideration here the baser motives which, it is to be feared, comesometimes into play)—may condemn him to the worst form of falseimprisonment, the death-in-life of a lunatic asylum, at a time when he ishimself practically unconscious;—who is there amongst us who can for amoment believe himself safe? Death-in-life did I say? It