Aged fifty-one, admitted July 11th 1822. This wretched creature is,
equally with the last, a prey to the bitterest remorse for imaginary
guilt. She fancies that she has murdered both her father and mother;
that she has undone, by her crimes, all that the Saviour of the world
had done for the good of mankind; that the devil has obtained power
above the Deity, and that he will have every body. All this, she says,
has proceeded from her guilt and infidelity, and her not doing what
she ought to have done; and her constant and bitter plaint of woe and
despair, from morning till night, is
“What will be done?
What will be done?
The d---l will have us all!
What will be done?”
In all other respects she is quite harmless; but this incessant tone of
grief and despair not only aggravates her own malady, but is extremely
annoying to other patients; particularly to the melancholy beings whose
minds are already too much in unison with her own, and it becomes
necessary at times to remove her from the usual airing-ground, to
another ground set apart for the basement patients.