soon on--and that within five minutes of the
time the doctor had left the ward. I was seated on the bed. The
attendant, true to his vicious instincts, grasped my throat and choked
me with the full power of a hand accustomed to that unmanly work. His
partner, in the meantime, had rendered me helpless by holding me flat
on my back while the attacking party choked me into breathless
submission. The first fight of the day was caused by a corn cob; this
of the evening by a crust of bread.

Were I to close the record of events of that October day with an
account of the assault just described, few, if any, would imagine that
I had failed to mention all the abuse to which I was that day
subjected. The fact is that not the half has been told. As the handling
of me within the twenty-four hours typifies the worst, but,
nevertheless, the not unusual treatment of many patients in a like
condition, I feel constrained to describe minutely the torture which
was my portion that night.

There are several methods of restraint in use to this day in various
institutions, chief among them "mechanical restraint" and so-called
"chemical restraint." The former consists in the use of instruments of
restraint, namely, strait-jackets or camisoles, muffs, straps, mittens,
restraint or strong sheets, etc.--all of them, except on the rarest of
occasions, instruments of neglect and torture. Chemical restraint
(sometimes called medical restraint) consists in the use of temporarily
paralyzing drugs--hyoscine being the popular "dose." By the use of such
drugs a troublesome patient may be rendered unconscious and kept so for
hours at a time. Indeed, very troublesome patients (especially when
attendants are scarce) are not infrequently kept in a stupefied
condition for days, or even for weeks--but only in institutions where
the welfare of the patients is lightly regarded.

After the supper fight I was left alone in my room for about an hour.
Then the assistant physician entered with three attendants, including
the two who had figured in my farce. One carried a canvas contrivance
known as a camisole. A camisole is a type of straitjacket; and a very
convenient type it is for those who resort to such methods of
restraint, for it enables them to deny the use of strait-jackets at
all. A strait-jacket, indeed, is not a camisole, just as electrocution
is not hanging.

A camisole, or, as I prefer to stigmatize it, a straitjacket, is really
a tight-fitting coa