The Mentally and Physically Diseased

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THE MENTALLY AND PHYSICALLY DISEASED.

On Saturday we accompanied Mr. Henry E. Ripley¹ on one of the thousands of visits which, during the eleven years he has uninterruptedly held the office of Superintendent of the Poor for the Eastern District, he has paid to the County Charitable Institutions at Flatbush. Most of these buildings, and their internal economy have been heretofore described in these columns; but the Asylum for Lunatics we believe has not. To that, specifically, our attention was directed on this visit.

The County buildings are approached from the "Clove Road" (a muddy, dirty, winding lane leading from Bedford to Flatbush) by an excellent macadamised read kept in repair at the county expense. The County Farm is some 70 acres in area, and is a long narrow strip of land, flanked on the one side by the Cortelyou farm, which, as has been repeatedly proved, the county needs and ought to purchase; and on the other by a country road leading to Canarsie. The buildings are erected facing this road, and somewhat too near it.

The Lunatic Asylum is the largest, last erected, and most symmetrical in plan of any; besides which it is placed further back from the road than the rest, and thus space is given in front for the creation of an ornamental lawn, which bids fair, when the shrubs have grown larger and the grass is cut, to assume a very picturesque and tasteful appearance. The building consists of a protruding centre, with heavy plain columns supporting the roof, and wings and dormitory extensions. The entire erection has not yet been put up--and from the recent gratifying diminution in the number of inmates in the institutions, we trust the addition will not be needed.

Dr. E. R. Chapin,² the physician in chief, was out at the time of our call; but his assistant, Dr. H. K. Wheeler,³ courteously escorted us through the building, which now contains somewhat over two hundred patients. The female patients are kept on one side of the building, the males on the other. On each floor a massive locked door leads into a spacious corridor, on each side of which are cells, with bath, dining, sleeping, and other rooms. Most of the patients were standing, sitting, or walking in the corridors. Attendants were present to preserve order and minister to their wants. We confess to have shared in some degree the popular idea that a lunatic asylum resembled somewhat a den of wild animals; but this notion was quite expelled from our mind by what we observed. Of the whole number of patients, less than a half a dozen were confined in their cells, and only two were under restraint of limb. Of the rest some were amusing themselves like children, others were lost in apparently profound meditation, and some were afflicted by a cacoethes loquendi;⁴ but none were dangerous and hardly any were even noisy. Several made themselves quite useful in assisting the attendants in the various household duties. Some had grievances to relate. One old lady was possessed with the idea that her son owned the place, and that her companions were thieving servants whom it behoved her to watch. Another was of opinion that he had been incarcerated for reasons of state. Many talked incoherently, breaking off in the middle of a sentence to say something else of no relevancy to what had been already said. One muttered prayers to preserve herself from evil; another went through various incantations, supposing the building to be infested with witches. Some were stolidly silent, and could hardly be got to answer a question. Others were inconveniently communicative, and could hardly be escaped from. Some took no notice of the entrance of visitors; others crowded round with a vacant stare or meaningless grin on their faces. Some had well developed heads, and hardly a trace of wildness in the eye—others showed their insanity plainly in their countenances. Very few of the patients suffered from natural idiocy—nearly all appeared to have been at one time more or less intelligent. Hardly any of the patients were colored people.

One patient was shaving another, who tends the fires. Another, who was a sailor, has taken to painting, and the walls of several of the rooms are adorned by curious specimens of his handiwork. As the Fourth of July was at hand, this man had gone into the patriotic line, and had painted the stars and stripes all over the walls of his cell. Georgiana Jackson, Professor Drake's daughter, whose career has been before our readers, seemed quite recovered from her recent attack of dementia, and will probably soon be liberated, though a relapse may send her back again. She looks quite youthful and very handsome—conversed intelligently with Mr. Ripley respecting people she knew in Williamsburgh. Nearly all the patients recognized Mr. R. by name, and inquired after their friends, some seeming perfectly to understand his replies. The young Englishman sent by the police from the 5th precinct station house, seemed quite rational, and talked in a very sensible vein on all the matters that we could think of mentioning to test his condition. He spoke gratefully of Capt. Woglom's⁵ kindness to him, and repeated truly and correctly the facts of his detention. He said that he had been so excited while in the Station House that the officers might well have deemed him mad; but insisted that he was sane then, as now. He has written to his parents in England, and will probably be sent back to them, as he seems now quite able to take care of himself. Many of the male inmates were taking exercise in the yard devoted to the purpose. They all seemed quiet and comfortable, except one decrepit old man, who was possessed with the notion that he could "lick anybody round the place;" and a German, who was picked up by the police here last fall, and who never spoke a word from that time until a week ago, when he suddenly broke silence, and went off into the other extreme, shouting at the top of his voice all day ever since.

We might fill the paper with references like these to particular cases; but enough has been said to show, that under the management prevailing in the Asylum, people suffering from all shades of insanity and delusion are kept in perfect safety, order, and comfort, coercion or severity being hardly ever needed, in any case, to preserve them from harming themselves or others. The skill and experience of Drs Chapin and Wheeler enables them to classify the cases, allowing to each the utmost freedom of movement consistent with safety. Some can be made useful even to labor outside the premises; more can be employed inside; and nearly all can be indulged in their little whims without harm; very few cases call for absolute restraint. One old lady has tamed a toad and it crawled about her like a small dog.

Subsequently we visited the old Lunatic Asylum, where about 70 of the chronic harmless cases, requiring little or no medical attendance, are placed, under the charge of Mr. Langworthy, who, with his wife, seems quite interested in his patients, and well liked by them in return. He treats them like children, they call him "father," and his wife "mother". Some would sing, some dance, others read, at her bidding. Not a single threat, or harsh word of command, had to be uttered in either of the Asylums during our stay, nor was there any instance of or tendency to disorder or insubordination. The worst was we saw was a fellow called Colony, one of General Walker's⁶ filibusters, whose gross depraviry had lost him his reason, leaving him still his brute ferocity. His hands were bound to prevent his doing injury to himself. On visiting the Hospital we found Dr. Turner engrossed as usual in his duties. The Dr. has recently been practising stereoscopy, by the aid of which process he is enabled to preserve life-like representations of the appearance of the subjects of which his varied surgical operations are mad.--He will thus probably, being in charge of one of the largest Hospitals in the United States, be enabled to form a very valuable (in a surgical point of view) collection of singular cases and operations, to which other members of the profession may find it useful to refer.

There is to us a sermon more startling than tongue can utter conveyed in the sights presented in the yards of a large Hospital. As we walk through the streets, exulting in our own perfect health, and meet others buoyant, athletic, self-reliant, we are tempted to forget the weakness of mortality, to undervalue the blessing of health, and to think more highly of humanity than we out to think. But a visit to the Hospital, with its scores of suffering, distorted, diseased patients, convinces us, for the time at least, that man after all is but a poor, frail, helpless creature, whose every feeling should steeped in humility, and whose constant aspiration should be for the support and protection of The Infinite.

On our last visit to the Hospital, some two years since, we noticed the want of an operating room. Notwithstanding the multitude of difficult operations which take place, we are surprised to find that a room adapted to the purpose of performing them has not yet been built. A Hospital without an operating room is like a newspaper office without a sanctum. We cannot imagine how the Superintendents have so long neglected taking measures to incur the comparatively small expense (probably six or seven hundred dollars) by which so urgent a need can be supplied.

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