My Experiences in a Lunatic Asylum: By a Sane PatientMerivale, Herman Charles
Science
My Experiences in a Lunatic Asylum: By a Sane Patient
Merivale, Herman Charles
Insanity (Law); Mentally ill -- Care
Patients there were of other and of many kinds. There was one black
gentleman from India who never spoke; but who used ever and anon to glare
at me, and make one or two steps towards me as if meditating a rush. Then
he would lick his lips with a very red tongue, sit down opposite me,
calmly pull off his boot and stocking, and nurse his foot. I think that he
had for me the greatest fascination of any of them; and I remember being
at times under the impression that he was a wild animal in disguise. One
poor creature there was whom I dimly but firmly believed to be an ape;
truly, for my desire in writing these papers is neither to extenuate nor
set down aught in malice. He was in truth, I have been assured, a
gentleman of large private fortune; but never have I seen humanity so
fearfully lowered. He was very ape-like, small and muscular. His chief
employment was to sit over old volumes of the 'Illustrated London News,'
which periodical was weekly sent to his address and taken in for him; to
lick his fingers, and turn the pages rapidly over, crooning the while some
horrible gibberish to himself in a voice quite inhuman, without two
consecutive syllables or one ray of reason; to tear out little bits or
whole pages of the volume, and throw them away with a triumphant yell,
which curdled all my blood and improved the nature of my dreams, watched
over as they were by two or three keepers, who would report me the next
morning as having had 'a bad turn' if I awoke in the night, utterly
nerve-shaken, under the influence of this living nightmare. This hapless
youth was known by the name of 'Jemmy,' and was a standing jest with the
warders, who delighted in playing in every possible way upon his ghastly
idiotcies. For he was lower than a madman, far; he was a raving idiot. He
would jump at times from his seat, mount on a chair, and play hideous
symphonies upon the window-pane to the accompaniment of his own voice;
once or twice, I am thankful to say, nature had its way, and he would
strike a warder violently between the eyes. When he dealt out this
measure, as once he did in my presence, to the servant whom I have
described as with me in the forest, who conveyed me to the asylum, and
there took service as a keeper--no doubt of personal affection to me--I
was, I confess, inwardly but intensely gratified.
This was the worst of my companions, certainly; but there were others
scarcely less uncanny. There was one poor old man, hopeless and harmless,
who wandered constantly from room to room, or up and down the long
dining-room, where it was the custom to herd some of us together,
murmuring to himself odds-and-ends which I presume to have been original,
snapping his fingers and making dreadful faces. His favourite burden was
this--which, in spite of all I can do to drive it away, has taken a firm
hold on my memory:
Gibbs is a beauty, and Gibbs is a louse;
Gibbs is a pig, and the pride of the house.
The second verse of the ditty running thus:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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