When the equality of age invites to friendship, this becomes very lively between the children of the house and the insane. There is one family which boards a young lunatic, who is also deaf and dumb. She has become a cherished sister for the daughters of her host. When they are at work together, enter and announce that you come to take the afflicted child back to the hospital. Instantly a cry of terror, followed by the precipitate flight of these girls, carrying their friend along with them, will teach you how lively is the alarm of their tenderness.
A woman of beautiful and noble countenance, and superior education, had been found insane at Brussels, without any information concerning her. From her own imperfect answers, it seems she was a native of Mauritius, where her father had been a man of note in the French revolution. Entrusted to a family of farmers at Gheel, they welcomed her with a delicate deference for her probable antecedents. During twenty years, they served a little table apart for her, with more elegance than their own; yet they received on her account only the pittance allowed for paupers. One day when Mr. Parigot mentioned this, they answered him, "It is enough, doctor; we love our little lady, and we wish to keep her here. No one could pay us for what we are doing; but we have no children, and this is our society."
A father on his death-bed had recommended to his daughter a poor lunatic, who had witnessed her birth, and who had amused her when little. When she married, she brought him in dower to her husband by the terms of the contract. Heaven blessed her generosity. The lunatic lived to be nearly a hundred years old. During this period, their house had to be rebuilt; but the spouses made a sacrifice of its symmetry and convenience, so as to leave untouched the cell of this old man which had become endeared to him by a long abode.
The relatives of patients are often too poor to offer presents. One day Dr. Parigot was visiting a young epileptic. As he had always found him well cared for, and knew that his friends came to see him every year, he ventured to ask the mistress of the house what she received on his account. She smiled and replied: "Our Joseph's relations are poor like me, and make their journey afoot. I keep them here a week, and they return afoot, but I give them a rye loaf and bacon to eat on the road. These are our presents." The exercise of these pious and delicate virtues has formed in the heart of the Gheel folk a sentiment of corporate honor and of mutual responsibility, which withstands individual perversions as well as the conflicts of social life. The whole community is interested in the fate of these unfortunates. Every one there might affirm concerning the insane, the humani nihil a me alienum puto.
The household that has no lunatic seems to lack something, and looks out for a favorable occasion to supply this want. The reciprocal supervision of the inhabitants prescribes moderation and justice to all. If woman presides in the household, and man out of doors, the eye of the community, watching over both, protects the weak in the course of daily life, as in the struggles which a paroxysm sometimes necessitates. Denounced by the cries of the victim, any arbitrary violence would be promptly reported to the physicians and to the administration. If official defenders were absent, the public voice would suffice, and it could not be silenced. Any suspicion of improper conduct is readily cleared up by the interchange of visits in the neighborhood, and thus a protection is established permanent, universal, invisible, sanctioned by custom and superior to all administrative patronage or written rule.
A population thus reared in the practice of sincere devotion to a special humanitary office, by immemorial tradition, by interest, by personal and communal honor, and by religious faith, may well bear comparison with the most zealous servants of any public or private asylum. The brothers or sisters of charity, who are but casually guardians of a certain infirmity the more difficult of treatment, because it attacks the soul as well as the body, can hardly possess those hereditary faculties and the thousand expedients which from infancy upward germ in the child and develop in a family and locality, devoted to the treatment of insanity. How much more unequal is the comparison with simple mercenaries! Heaven forbid we should ignore the abnegation of self, so often evinced in the most obscure services, or the unprovided aptitudes which neither danger nor disgust discourage. Yet it cannot be denied that the insane generally persist in regarding all overseers as jailers and complacent tools of the injustice of families or of society. At Gheel, on the contrary, the most susceptible patients can see around them only hosts who take in boarders, and among whom they often find friends and companions. Before all disinterested judgment, what is elsewhere the competition of business here assumes the character of a social and medical mission, while a closer analysis discerns, in this creation of a lively faith sustained at once by charity and interest, a fortunate equilibrium of the springs of human action. The twofold motive of honor and interest acts in effect like a spring regulated by a counterpoise.
Is the guardian distinguished for his sagacity and fidelity in the discharge of his assumed cares? He will be kept upon the list and recommended to families by the administration. He will have the opportunity of selection, and may exercise it so as either to gratify his sympathies or to advance his interests.
In the sphere of a true rural life, are freely developed those affinities which re-ally man with the beast and bird, and this first degree in the scale of affections is far from being without influence on the state of certain patients. Some are interested in the cattle which they tend, in the horses, the dogs, or the birds, of which they make companions. One lunatic at Gheel is constantly thinking of birds; no one is more ingenious than he in catching them. Once caged, he never leaves them, he takes them from his cell into the family apartment, or, while they disport in the sunshine, their vigilant master mounts guard to protect them from their enemy the cat. Is it doubtful that these child-like enjoyments dissipate many sorrows, or that they aid to re-establish the harmony of the soul with the body? Deprive this man of the society of his birds, indubitably his condition will be aggravated. Whether as predisposing or exciting causes, wounded pride and vanity and passional isolation amid the pressure of crowds underlie many forms of insanity. In assembling under his protection the group of inferior animals, every man may innocently satisfy sentiments which are ruffled and disappointed among his own species. Spiritual space is enlarged about him, and the heart is amused by the play of passions similar to his own in organisms so different as to render impossible the collisions of rivalry.