SINCE I LEFT TROY LUNATIC ASYLUM AS A PATIENT.
More than three years have elapsed since I left the asylum, yet I have often visited it within that time, taking a survey with diary and pen in hand, minuting down names of persons, localities and transactions, to refresh my mind in this direction that I might be better prepared to do justice to my God, the People and myself while wielding the pen in this great and awful disclosure, not forgetful to implore aid from that spirit which guides into all truth.
Since I left the asylum I have availed myself of books written by different authors who have been shut up in lunatic asylums, whose disclosures correspond with the facts herein set forth in regard to the treatment of patients.
Rev. H. Chase penned out two years and four months of his asylum life spent in Utica asylum. I believe it was an oversight in his friends in sending him there. The Reverend remarks that he is not aware that anybody in or out of the church looks upon him otherwise than before he went to the institution. I would be glad if I could have as much charity as the Reverend. But I have no confidence in the flesh; since I left the asylum my reputation has been encroached upon by the slanderer's tongue, by magistrate, by the foreman in the great mowing machine shop at Falls, by grandfathers, behind my back, before children, who have said to me, "Grand Pa says that you are crazy, and asks when are you going back to the asylum."
Let those slanderers know we have as much feeling as a toad, and try to become gentlemen.
Before I went to the asylums as a patient I was totally ignorant of the character and secret workings of these popular institutions. I was also totally ignorant and understood not the different modes and operations practiced in sending patients to insane or lunatic asylums.