hadn’t been faced with these intransigent frogs. It was so unjust.
~ * ~
3
Morning at the Steilacoom Asylum
Assent - and you are sane
Demur — you’re straightway dangerous—
And handled with a Chain—
Emily Dickinson, 1862
Despite his isolation, Dr James Carr tried to keep up with current developments in his field. He had written several letters to colleagues detailing the astonishing earthquake cures at Steilacoom last year. There had been a flurry of gratifying interest, but no one could duplicate the results. The cure only seemed effective when it had the authority and scope of an Act of God. Nothing smaller worked. He had spent several weeks designing the Carr Quake Chamber, a tubular cell suspended from the ceiling by rope. He had drawn up plans, specified dimensions, sacrificed nothing in the way of patient comfort or the gyrational range of the device. It would never be built. Certainly not at Steilacoom, where even outmoded technologies such as the Autenrieth Mask, the Cox Swing, Reil’s Fly-wheel, or Langermann’s Cell were deemed beyond the austere budget of Contractor Greene. For a time, Carr had been quite interested in the fat-and-blood cure popularized by Dr S. Weir Mitchell, a leading neurologist during the Civil War. The fat-and-blood cure emphasized overfeeding, massage, and complete rest. But someone had told Contractor Greene that Leland Stanford found it cost-effective to supply the Chinese railway workers with opium, which acted as an appetite suppressant and reduced food costs. Most of the patients in Steilacoom were on some sort of medication anyway; many of them took opium derivatives. Contractor Greene cut their meals to two a day. He called this trimming the fat from the budget.
The regimen Dr Carr now envisioned for Steilacoom rested, like a footstool, on three solid points. The first was hearty food - beef, in particular, as so many of the insane are lacking in iron. He described to Greene a fortifying dish that could be made by scraping the tender parts of a steak away from the tendinous connections so that the juice is retained and then salting it heavily. This diet would be contraindicated, of course, in those cases where patients suffered from the delusion that they were made to eat human flesh or the blood of their friends.
The second point was exercise. Steilacoom boasted its own roller-skating rink; all that was required now was the provision of a reasonable number of skates so the patients would not have to wait so long for a turn. Dr Carr would have liked to see the insane on horseback, too, and participating in guided gymnastics, but he tried to deal in realities.
The final point was music, music and dance. The medicinal benefits of music, he told Contractor Greene, were hard to overstate. A piano or melodeon in the female ward would answer the purpose. Violins for the men. There was already an asylum band and Dr Carr would have liked to see every inmate participate, the most incapacitated being asked only to play the triangle or the sticks.
The superintendents, led by Hank Webber, their most illustrious member, had promised Greene that when Dr Carr’s contract expired, he could replace him with a physician of his own choice.
‘Get the patients out in the open air,’ Dr Carr was always nagging the wardens. ‘The breath of God’s free atmosphere, the open face of Mount Rainier, these things are a wonderful tonic,’ and they took this advice when wood needed to be cut or water drawn, and they did, out of respect, refrain from kicking the lunatics in the physician’s presence. Even so, they resented him. Dr Carr could feel this and he complained to the patients about it often.
One of the most sympathetic of the insane was the young man named B.J. Voisard, who now stood outside Dr Carr’s office, trying to figure out how to open the door with one hand and not drop the load of wood he was carrying with
~ * ~
3
Morning at the Steilacoom Asylum
Assent - and you are sane
Demur — you’re straightway dangerous—
And handled with a Chain—
Emily Dickinson, 1862
Despite his isolation, Dr James Carr tried to keep up with current developments in his field. He had written several letters to colleagues detailing the astonishing earthquake cures at Steilacoom last year. There had been a flurry of gratifying interest, but no one could duplicate the results. The cure only seemed effective when it had the authority and scope of an Act of God. Nothing smaller worked. He had spent several weeks designing the Carr Quake Chamber, a tubular cell suspended from the ceiling by rope. He had drawn up plans, specified dimensions, sacrificed nothing in the way of patient comfort or the gyrational range of the device. It would never be built. Certainly not at Steilacoom, where even outmoded technologies such as the Autenrieth Mask, the Cox Swing, Reil’s Fly-wheel, or Langermann’s Cell were deemed beyond the austere budget of Contractor Greene. For a time, Carr had been quite interested in the fat-and-blood cure popularized by Dr S. Weir Mitchell, a leading neurologist during the Civil War. The fat-and-blood cure emphasized overfeeding, massage, and complete rest. But someone had told Contractor Greene that Leland Stanford found it cost-effective to supply the Chinese railway workers with opium, which acted as an appetite suppressant and reduced food costs. Most of the patients in Steilacoom were on some sort of medication anyway; many of them took opium derivatives. Contractor Greene cut their meals to two a day. He called this trimming the fat from the budget.
The regimen Dr Carr now envisioned for Steilacoom rested, like a footstool, on three solid points. The first was hearty food - beef, in particular, as so many of the insane are lacking in iron. He described to Greene a fortifying dish that could be made by scraping the tender parts of a steak away from the tendinous connections so that the juice is retained and then salting it heavily. This diet would be contraindicated, of course, in those cases where patients suffered from the delusion that they were made to eat human flesh or the blood of their friends.
The second point was exercise. Steilacoom boasted its own roller-skating rink; all that was required now was the provision of a reasonable number of skates so the patients would not have to wait so long for a turn. Dr Carr would have liked to see the insane on horseback, too, and participating in guided gymnastics, but he tried to deal in realities.
The final point was music, music and dance. The medicinal benefits of music, he told Contractor Greene, were hard to overstate. A piano or melodeon in the female ward would answer the purpose. Violins for the men. There was already an asylum band and Dr Carr would have liked to see every inmate participate, the most incapacitated being asked only to play the triangle or the sticks.
The superintendents, led by Hank Webber, their most illustrious member, had promised Greene that when Dr Carr’s contract expired, he could replace him with a physician of his own choice.
‘Get the patients out in the open air,’ Dr Carr was always nagging the wardens. ‘The breath of God’s free atmosphere, the open face of Mount Rainier, these things are a wonderful tonic,’ and they took this advice when wood needed to be cut or water drawn, and they did, out of respect, refrain from kicking the lunatics in the physician’s presence. Even so, they resented him. Dr Carr could feel this and he complained to the patients about it often.
One of the most sympathetic of the insane was the young man named B.J. Voisard, who now stood outside Dr Carr’s office, trying to figure out how to open the door with one hand and not drop the load of wood he was carrying with
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