ad of trying to make the patient's last days
comfortable, the attendants subjected him to a course of treatment
severe enough to have sent even a sound man to an early grave. I
endured privations and severe abuse for one month at the State
Hospital. This man suffered in all ways worse treatment for many
months.

I became well acquainted with two jovial and witty Irishmen. They were
common laborers. One was a hodcarrier, and a strapping fellow. When he
arrived at the institution, he was at once placed in the violent ward,
though his "violence" consisted of nothing more than an annoying sort
of irresponsibility. He irritated the attendants by persistently doing
certain trivial things after they had been forbidden. The attendants
made no allowance for his condition of mind. His repetition of a
forbidden act was interpreted as deliberate disobedience. He was
physically powerful, and they determined to cow him. Of the master
assault by which they attempted to do this I was not an eyewitness. But
I was an ear witness. It was committed behind a closed door; and I
heard the dull thuds of the blows, and I heard the cries for mercy
until there was no breath left in the man with which he could beg even
for his life. For days, that wrecked Hercules dragged himself about the
ward moaning pitifully. He complained of pain in his side and had
difficulty in breathing, which would seem to indicate that some of his
ribs had been fractured. This man was often punished, frequently for
complaining of the torture already inflicted. But later, when he began
to return to the normal, his good-humor and native wit won for him an
increasing degree of good treatment.

The other patient's arch offence--a symptom of his disease--was that he
gabbled incessantly. He could no more stop talking than he could right
his reason on command. Yet his failure to become silent at a word was
the signal for punishment. On one occasion an attendant ordered him to
stop talking and take a seat at the further end of the corridor, about
forty feet distant. He was doing his best to obey, even running to keep
ahead of the attendant at his heels. As they passed the spot where I
was sitting, the attendant felled him with a blow behind the ear; and,
in falling, the patient's head barely missed the wall.

Addressing me, the attendant said, "Did you see that?"

"Yes," I replied, "and I'll not forget it."

"Be sure to report it to the doctor," he said, which remark showed