FOOTNOTES:
[A] My bowels had been obstinately constipated for ten or twelve days; when the medicine operated, I was better.
[B] I shall never forget that, while on our way to Utica on the cars, between Schenectady and Utica, Mr. Harvey tried to divert my mind from the subject of going to the asylum. He first referred to the case of Gerrit Smith, who had been in the asylum, to show that it was no disgrace to go there; that did not comfort me. He next called my attention to the case of Major Lee, of Sandy Hill, who had recently died, and to the disposition of his property. I knew he did this to divert my mind; I was indifferent to all this, as I knew what it was done for.
[CHAPTER II.]
It must not be understood that the same mode of operation is practiced in all cases in sending patients to an insane or lunatic asylum. It must be understood also that we are speaking of a State institution, like the one at Utica.
Some patients are supported in that institution solely by the county to which the patient belongs; others are supported partly by the county and partly by the friends of the patient, or by the patient himself or herself, as the case may be; while others, called private patients, are supported wholly by themselves or by their friends.
When a patient is entered as private, it is not necessary to consult doctors, judges or jurors. Suppose it to be a wife, a husband, or a child. The patient is taken to the asylum, terms of entrance are fixed upon with the superintendent, bonds are given or money in advance as security, and the patient is received. In the most of cases the patient is not consulted in the matter. In some cases, however, the patient is consulted, and consents to go; is made to believe that the asylum is like any other infirmary or hospital, where patients are taken to be nursed and cared for, and cured if possible. In the most of cases, perhaps, there is a kind of dread and horror attending a patient taken to the asylum, and very many go against their will. This opposition is generally attributed to their insanity, and is too generally received as evidence that such an one is a fit subject for a lunatic asylum. Should this dread and fear of going to an asylum be made the criterion by which to determine the sanity or insanity of the patient, I have no doubt but more than three-fourths of the people of the State of New York would be adjudged insane.
Another mode of getting a subject into the asylum—the laws of the State having fixed this mode—is as follows: Two physicians are consulted, and if in their judgment the subject is insane, they so represent the case to the judge of the county, and he issues his order to commit this subject to the asylum, and the order is obeyed. This mode of operation covers a vast number of cases, ranging through all the different grades of what physicians may be pleased to call insanity, from acute mania down through melancholia and epilepsy to the dull, moping, driveling state of idiocy, taking, in its sweep, dotage and childishness of old age.