following
January, except for one fortnight, I was confined in one or another
small, barred room, hardly better than a cell in a prison and in some
instances far worse.

A corn cob was the determining factor at this crisis. Seeing in myself
an embryonic Raphael, I had a habit of preserving all kinds of odds and
ends as souvenirs of my development. These, I believed, sanctified by
my Midas-like touch, would one day be of great value. If the public can
tolerate, as it does, thousands of souvenir hunters, surely one with a
sick mind should be indulged in the whim for collecting such souvenirs
as come within his reach. Among the odds and ends that I had gathered
were several corn cobs. These I intended to gild and some day make
useful by attaching to them small thermometers. But on the morning of
October 18th, the young man in charge of me, finding the corn cobs,
forthwith informed me that he would throw them away. I as promptly
informed him that any such action on his part would lead to a fight.
And so it did.

When this fight began, there were two attendants at hand. I fought them
both to a standstill, and told them I should continue to fight until
the assistant physician came to the ward. Thereupon, my special
attendant, realizing that I meant what I said, held me while the other
went for assistance. He soon returned, not with the assistant
physician, but with a third attendant, and the fight was renewed. The
one who had acted as messenger, being of finer fibre than the other
two, stood at a safe distance. It was, of course, against the rules of
the institution for an attendant to strike a patient, and, as I was
sane enough to report with a fair chance of belief any forbidden blows,
each captor had to content himself with holding me by an arm and
attempting to choke me into submission. However, I was able to prevent
them from getting a good grip on my throat, and for almost ten minutes
I continued to fight, telling them all the time that I would not stop
until a doctor should come. An assistant physician, but not the one in
charge of my case, finally appeared. He gave orders that I be placed in
the violent ward, which adjoined the private apartment I was then
occupying, and no time was lost in locking me in a small room in that
ward.

Friends have said to me: "Well, what is to be done when a patient runs
amuck?" The best answer I can make is: "Do nothing to make him run
amuck." Psychiatrists have since told me that