Aged near fifty, and admitted nearly three years since. This patient is
a Neapolitan. He was tried at Maidstone assizes on a criminal charge of
attempting to violate his own niece; but was found to be insane, and
was transferred hither from Maidstone gaol. This man, though not the
most frantic, is certainly one of the most troublesome and refractory
patients on this establishment. In other times he would be considered
as possessed by a dæmon of discontent, for he is certainly one of the
most noisy, grumbling, querulent, stubborn, and implacable geniuses
that this asylum has ever entertained, and such is his constant
practice from morning to night the year round.
He is, besides, extremely cunning and artful; knows perfectly well
what he says and does, and is so inveterately dissatisfied with being
confined, as he says, for nothing at all, that he sometimes refuses to
take his food until it is forced upon him.