MY EXPERIENCES IN A LUNATIC ASYLUM

I.

It's a mad world, my masters.


I suppose that the motto I have affixed to the first chapter of the brief
history of a singular personal experience is by this time an accepted
axiom. Was it in one of Mr. Sala's columns of gossip that I was reading
the other day of the man of the pen who commented upon the imprisonment in
an asylum of a brother of his craft merely by saying, 'What a fool he must
be! For years I have been as mad as he, only I took care never to say so'?
There are odd corners in the brains of most of us, filled with queer
fancies which are as well kept out of sight; eccentricities, I suppose
they may be called. The man who is so 'concentric' as to be innocent of
peculiarities is a companion of a dull sort. But Heaven help us all when
such things may be called, and treated as, madness. For, if all of us were
used according to our deserts in that way, who should escape the modern
substitutes for whipping? England would not contain the asylums that
should be constructed, and might go far to deserve the Gravedigger's
description of her for Hamlet's benefit: 'There the men are as mad as he.'
Let me go a step further. There are few of us, perhaps, who have not seen
something in our lives of the strange nervous disorders which have been
generalised as 'hypochondria,' which are, in fact, I think, the different
outcomes of a common affection--temporary exhaustion of brain. Beyond a
certain point it becomes delirium, the wandering of weakness which is so
closely connected with many forms of illness, both in the beginning and
during the course and recovery. When the victims of delirium may be added
to the eccentric members of society; when at any moment the certificates
of any two doctors who may be utter strangers to the patient--acting under
the instructions of friends who are frightened and perplexed, perhaps, and
try to believe that they are 'doing for the best' (I leave out of
consideration here the baser motives which, it is to be feared, come
sometimes into play)--may condemn him to the worst form of false
imprisonment, the death-in-life of a lunatic asylum, at a time when he is
himself practically unconscious;--who is there amongst us who can for a
moment believe himself safe? Death-in-life did I say? It is worse; for it
is a life-in-life, worse than any conceivable form of death. The sights
and sounds through which one has to live can never be forgotten by him
who has lived through them, but will haunt him ever and always. Never let
next friends persuade themselves that they are 'doing for the best' for
him for whom they so do. For themselves they may think that they are. For
him they cannot possibly do worse. Every nerve should be strained to save
a man from that fate, if it be humanly possible, ay, even if he be mad
indeed; for while there is life there is hope, till that step has been
taken. When it has, I verily believe that hope is reduced to its smallest.
For the personal experience which I have to tell has taught me this: that
the man who comes sane and safe out of the hands of mad-doctors and
warders, with all the wonderful network of complications which, by
Commissioners, certificates, and Heaven knows what, our law has woven
round the unlucky victim in the worst of all its various aberrations, is
very sane indeed. And very safe too, happily. His lines afterwards are
not altogether pleasant. The curious looks and whispers, the first
meetings with old friends, the general anxiety that he should not 'excite
himself' (which he may be better excused for doing than most people,
perhaps), magnified, no doubt, by his own natural sensitiveness, are
difficult in their way. He does not mind them much, is amused by them at
times; for, with the strong sense of right on one's side, conflict is
rather pleasant than not to the well-balanced soul. But the thread of life
and work and duty has been rudely broken by the shock, and has to be knit
again under great drawbacks. It can be done, though; and one starts again
the wiser and the better man.