taxed the adaptability of a more versatile being.  But coarse as he was, this unkempt novice did not abuse his charge—­except in so far as his inability to interpret or anticipate wants contributed to the sick man’s distress.  My own attendant, realizing that the patient was suffering for the want of skilled attention, spent a part of his time in this unhappy room, which was but across the hall from my own.  The end soon came.

My attendant, who had had training as a nurse, detected the unmistakable signs of impending death.  He forthwith informed the owner of the sanatorium that the patient was in a dying condition, and urged him (a doctor) to go at once to the bedside.  The doctor refused to comply with the request on the plea that he was at the time “too busy.”  When at last he did visit the room, the patient was dead.  Then came the supervisor, who took charge of the body.  As it was being carried from the room the supervisor, the “handy man” of the owner, said:  “There goes the best paying patient the institution had; the doctor” (meaning the owner) “was getting eighty-five dollars a week out of him.”  Of this sum not more than twenty dollars at most, at the time this happened, could be considered as “cost of maintenance.”  The remaining sixty-five dollars went into the pocket of the owner.  Had the man lived for one year, the owner might have pocketed (so far as this one case was concerned) the neat but wicked profit of thirty-three hundred and eighty dollars.  And what would the patient have received?  The same privilege of living in neglect and dying neglected.

VIII

For the first few weeks after my arrival at the sanatorium, I was cared for by two attendants, one by day and one by night.  I was still helpless, being unable to put my feet out of bed, much less upon the floor, and it was necessary that I be continually watched lest an impulse to walk should seize me.  After a month or six weeks, however, I grew stronger, and from that time only one person was assigned to care for me.  He was with me all day, and slept at night in the same room.

The earliest possible dismissal of one of my two attendants was expedient for the family purse; but such are the deficiencies in the prevailing treatment of the insane that relief in one direction often occasions evil in another.  No sooner was the expense thus reduced than I was subjected to a detestable form of restraint which amounted to torture.  To guard me at night while the remaining attendant slept, my hands were imprisoned in what is known as a “muff.”  A muff, innocent enough to the eyes of those who have never worn one, is in reality a relic of the Inquisition.  It is an instrument of restraint which has been in use for centuries and even in many of our public and private institutions is still in use.  The muff I wore was made of canvas, and differed in construction from a muff designed for the hands of fashion only in the inner partition, also of canvas, which separated my hands, but allowed them to overlap.  At either end was a strap which buckled tightly around the wrist and was locked.