was not thus to be fooled; and her growing belief that her husband had been assaulted was confirmed by a sight she saw before her visit was ended.  Another patient, a foreigner who was a target for abuse, was knocked flat two or three times as he was roughly forced along the corridor.  I saw this little affair and I saw that the good wife saw it.  The next day she called again and took her husband home.  The result was that after a few (probably sleepless) nights, she had to return him to the hospital and trust to God rather than the State to protect him.

Another victim was a man sixty years of age.  He was quite inoffensive, and no patient in the ward seemed to attend more strictly to his own business.  Shortly after my transfer from the violent ward this man was so viciously attacked that his arm was broken.  The attendant (the man who had so viciously assaulted me) was summarily discharged.  Unfortunately, however, the relief afforded the insane was slight and brief, for this same brute, like another whom I have mentioned, soon secured a position in another institution—­this one, however, a thousand miles distant.

Death by violence in a violent ward is after all not an unnatural death—­for a violent ward.  The patient of whom I am about to speak was also an old man—­over sixty.  Both physically and mentally he was a wreck.  On being brought to the institution he was at once placed in a cell in the Bull Pen, probably because of his previous history for violence while at his own home.  But his violence (if it ever existed) had already spent itself, and had come to be nothing more than an utter incapacity to obey.  His offence was that he was too weak to attend to his common wants.  The day after his arrival, shortly before noon, he lay stark naked and helpless upon the bed in his cell.  This I know, for I went to investigate immediately after a ward-mate had informed me of the vicious way in which the head attendant had assaulted the sick man.  My informant was a man whose word regarding an incident of this character I would take as readily as that of any man I know.  He came to me, knowing that I had taken upon myself the duty of reporting such abominations.  My informant feared to take the initiative, for, like many other patients who believe themselves doomed to continued confinement, he feared to invite abuse at the hands of vengeful attendants.  I therefore promised him that I would report the case as soon as I had an opportunity.

All day long this victim of an attendant’s unmanly passion lay in his cell in what seemed to be a semi-conscious condition.  I took particular pains to observe his condition, for I felt that the assault of the morning might result in death.  That night, after the doctor’s regular tour of inspection, the patient in question was transferred to a room next my own.  The mode of transfer impressed itself upon my memory.  Two attendants—­one of them being he who had so brutally beaten the patient—­placed the man in a sheet and, each taking an end, carried the hammocklike contrivance, with its inert contents, to what proved to be its last resting-place above ground.  The bearers seemed as much concerned about their burden as one might be about a dead dog, weighted and ready for the river.