As for mental occupation with books, games, spectacles, and social assemblies, they tend to excite instead of reducing the circulation of the brain, and are often opposed to the desired equilibrium of the organism. In the Russian hospitals, the military organization of labor becomes but a tribute of passive obedience to absolute authority, and ceases to effect energetic revulsion from the bewilderment of the mind. So needlework affords to women a kind of instinctive or mechanical activity of the fingers, which leaves the imagination vagabond. Such labors, prolonged for many hours, are so much the more objectionable from their sedentary nature, which rather favors than averts glandular obstructions and correlative disturbance in the circulatory and nervous systems.
The mode of life of the small farmer, considered as a whole, combines natural interests with varied occupations and movements requiring skill and strength in moderate degree, observation and attention. Above all, man feels himself here a direct coagent with the elemental forces, a shareholder in the commonwealth of the universe, alternately obeying and commanding, utilizing and enjoying the play of solar and planetary forces. It is true that all have not equally the intellectual consciousness of their participation in this great drama, nor the intimate satisfaction and dignity that accrue from it; yet none can be alien to its penetrating virtues, they sustain the meanest hind and the most oppressed slave; much more, the free, the voluntary, and amateur collaborator. The aspects of nature wear the color of the spirit; they are sanative in proportion as man becomes the mirror, the guide, and the instrument of her powers. In the prisoner, at best their suggestions cherish painful aspirations. For the free laborer alone are they pregnant with infinite sweetness.
The arts, and especially music, contribute to the social life of Gheel, and repeat for many a tormented spirit the experience of David with Saul. [Footnote 230]
[Footnote 230: I Kings xvi. 23.]
A lunatic, surnamed Colbert the Great, a skilful violinist, founded the harmony or choral society, and his name is still honored in the memory of all the Gheelois. His portrait adorns the hall where the society holds its meetings, and this homage attests the cordial fraternity, devoid of prejudices and of false shame, which characterizes the Gheel folk. In their concerts, at patriotic or religious festivals, the parts are distributed to the musicians according to the irrespective talents; if they play or sing well, nothing more is required. To improve natural gifts, there is a singing-school for the insane. Müller, a distinguished German composer and chief of the harmony club, is the director designated by the public voice, who solicits the honor of forming, among the insane, pupils who shall assist him in his concerts.
Several of the insane are members of the choir of Saint Dymphna. Many of them piously mingle in the processions. They are often seen in this church imploring on their knees the grace of heaven. Only those whose illusion it is to believe themselves gods or kings, do not kneel, but otherwise behave themselves with decency and respect. Here, as elsewhere, individuals subject to aberrations of reason, still undergo the influence of the prevailing tone and manner of deportment, and give in their turn good examples. They are generally much attached to the faith of their childhood. In health or in sickness, and at the approach of death, they are admitted to the sacraments of the church whenever their condition is not such as to exclude moral conscience. These acts raise the poor lunatic in his self-respect, and in the eyes of the population they are a medicine of the soul.
Toward the close of the eighteenth century, when the rigors previously enforced against the insane were relaxed, a king was the first to experience the benefits of an opposite system. George III. was treated by Willis on the conditions of personal liberty, out-door amusements, and the family life. The sons of Willis, faithful to their father's lessons, continued to receive at Greatford, lunatics boarded in private families, but at prices which limited this privilege to the wealthy. Gheel, without splendid palaces, gardens, and parks, which delight visitors, but make little impression on those who are used to them, accords to the poorest the treatment of George III., and with the precious addition of work.
In France, Pinel was the promoter and persevering apostle of the reform first inaugurated at Bicêtre, then extended to the Salpétrière and Charenton. Aiming to raise to the dignity of patients those hapless victims who had previously been treated as criminals or as wild beasts, beaten and chained, he realized half his programme in making them simple prisoners, watched and cared for with intelligence. His successes were propagated throughout Europe, and all public or private asylums abandoned the system of direct violence or constraint, to give, in the measure of their resources in grounds and buildings, a larger part to liberty of action and to labor. The so-called "non-restraint" system of England merely substitutes for active cruelties dark cells padded with mattresses. Some asylums endeavor to utilize the influence of the director's family circle, but only at Gheel are the common rights of man accorded to the insane. Benevolent sentiments toward the insane have been cherished in Mohammedan countries; regular and methodical labor with a view to economy is common to many establishments; excursions and amusements are organized by a few: but nowhere so effectively as at Gheel have liberty, sympathy, and labor been combined in the common interest of the insane and of their keepers. These, with the sedative influence of a mild, moist climate on the temperament, and the consolations of religion for the soul, have almost divested insanity of its dangers, and authorize emancipation from those chains of stone which elsewhere weigh no less than chains of iron on the unhappy victims of fear and distrust.
This humble parish addresses to every conscience a lesson eloquent in its simplicity of tender devotion toward our brothers the most fallen, and whom the world disdains and repulses. It shows how charity may precede and complete science.