Gheel, A Colony of the Insane [pp. 824-837]

GCteel.
rifice of its symmetry and conve nience, so as to leave untouched the
cell of this old man which had be come 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 epi leptic. 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
alienui pzo lao
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 im
proper 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 patron age or written rule.
A population thus reared in the
practice of sincere devotion to a spe cial humanitary office, by immemorial
tradition, by interest, by personal
and communal honor, and by reli gious faith, may well bear compari son 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 wve 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
83 I