A Sane Patient

My Experiences in a Lunatic Asylum A Sane Patient

Publisher Marketing: Sitting at my desk as I am sitting now, with the comforting pipe and jug of beer by my side (deadly poisons to me, both of them, I have been often assured), and with a profound and grateful sense of extreme physical wellbeing, it is difficult for me to believe that not so long ago I was pronounced to be suffering at different times or all at once from epilepsy, partial paralysis, fits, delusions, suicidal and homicidal mania, 'voices' (a very professional and dangerous piece of humbug, of which I shall have more to say presently), 'visions' (Anglice, dreams), and the Lord knows what beside. As I was utterly prostrate from weakness, it reads like a dangerous complication; and I feel with pride that I may safely challenge Maria Jolly herself to the proof. It is something to have lived through all these maladies, and to be engaged in replenishing the welcome beer-glass, or, like the moralist of Thackeravian memory, Alive and merry at-year, Dipping my nose in the Gascon wine. But it is not too much to say, -and I speak again the wise words of my good friend and doctor, not my own, -that there are at this present moment languishing in these places many men who might well have been rescued, may be even now (and a mob attack, Bastille fashion, upon the whole body of private asylums would, to my mind, do as much good as harm), -men who might well have been spared and saved to do good work in the world, but who now lie as helpless as the enchanter at the feet of Vivien in the hollow oak- Lost to life and use, and name and fame."