Like fires and railroad disasters, assaults seemed to come in groups.
Days would pass without a single outbreak. Then would come a veritable
carnival of abuse--due almost invariably to the attendants' state of
mind, not to an unwonted aggressiveness on the part of the patients. I
can recall as especially noteworthy several instances of atrocious
abuse. Five patients were chronic victims. Three of them, peculiarly
irresponsible, suffered with especial regularity, scarcely a day
passing without bringing to them its quota of punishment. One of these,
almost an idiot, and quite too inarticulate to tell a convincing story
even under the most favorable conditions, became so cowed that,
whenever an attendant passed, he would circle his oppressor as a
whipped cur circles a cruel master. If this avoidance became too
marked, the attendant would then and there chastise him for the
implied, but unconscious insult.
There was a young man, occupying a cell next to mine in the Bull Pen,
who was so far out of his mind as to be absolutely irresponsible. His
offence was that he could not comprehend and obey. Day after day I
could hear the blows and kicks as they fell upon his body, and his
incoherent cries for mercy were as painful to hear as they are
impossible to forget. That he survived is surprising. What wonder that
this man, who was "violent," or who was made violent, would not permit
the attendants to dress him! But he had a half-witted friend, a
ward-mate, who could coax him into his clothes when his oppressors
found him most intractable.
Of all the patients known to me, the one who was assaulted with the
greatest frequency was an incoherent and irresponsible man of sixty
years. This patient was restless and forever talking or shouting, as
any man might if oppressed by such delusions as his. He was profoundly
convinced that one of the patients had stolen his stomach--an idea
inspired perhaps by the remarkable corpulency of the person he accused.
His loss he would woefully voice even while eating. Of course, argument
to the contrary had no effect; and his monotonous recital of his
imaginary troubles made him unpopular with those whose business it was
to care for him. They showed him no mercy. Each day--including the
hours of the night, when the night watch took a hand--he was belabored
with fists, broom handles, and frequently with the heavy bunch of keys
which attendants usually carry on a long chain. He was also kicked and
choked, and his suffering was aggravated by his almost continuous
confinement in the Bull Pen. An exception to the general rule (for such
continued abuse often causes death), this man lived a long time--five
years, as I learned later.
Another victim, forty-five years of age, was one who had formerly been
a successful man of affairs. His was a forceful personality, and the
traits of his sane days influenced his conduct when he broke down
mentally. He was in the expansive phase of paresis, a phase
distinguished by an exaggerated sense of well-being, and by delusions
of grandeur which are symptoms of this form as well as of several other
forms of mental disease. Paresis, as everyone knows, is considered
incurable and victims of it seldom live more than three or four years.
In this instance, instead 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.