Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 28.djvu/73

Rh We add a few notes of our own visit to Gheel, which we made on two days in the spring of 1883. We arrived there, by railway, in the same train with a mother who was bringing her idiot son—a lusty youth, twenty years old—to leave him there. We found a town with wide streets, not entirely regular, and poorly paved, with few people out. The houses, two or three stories high, appeared well kept, with glistening window-panes and brightly polished door-knobs. Passing the grand square, near the church, we met a man about sixty years old, walking slowly along, with a baby in his arms which he was trying to entertain with a most discordant song. He was a patient, taking care for an hour or two of his host's child. He performed his duty faithfully and diligently, bidding good-morning to such persons as he knew, and exchanging a few words with them.

A few steps more brought us to the wide, tree-bordered avenue on which the infirmary is situated. The building is a handsome structure of brick and stone. We sought out Dr. Peeters, and after a few moments of conversation were authorized to visit the institution, and then, in company with a guard of section, to inspect the city and some of the houses where insane are entertained. The infirmary was throughout a model of Flemish neatness, with well-scoured floors and flagging, bright kitchens, and abundance of air and light. The sick-wards are in front. We paid a rapid visit to the women's quarter. Some were in the dormitory, some walking in the halls. Among the former, some of the more seriously affected ones were plaintively muttering words that we could not catch, others were grieving over the persecutions of which they imagined themselves the objects; another, of pleasant appearance, and fluent in conversation, answered all of our questions with suavity. She was delighted to receive our visit; the only thing about it that troubled her was to see our head some sixty feet above our body, and she could not but be surprised at it. She was well treated, and desired nothing better than her present condition. Thence we went into the garden, where we found two sisters, both hysteric, waiting their transfer to a close asylum. One had a dangerous propensity to homicide, and the other was subject to a depravity of manners that made it improper for her to be at large.

Our first visit, in company with a guard, to the boarding-houses, was at the comfortable dwelling of a well-bred lady, who was entertaining an Englishman and a Pole. We found the Englishman in his room, a bright and spacious apartment, sitting on a sofa, with his head between his hands. Our efforts to engage him in conversation, even in his own language, were vain. He answered sulkily, and ended by muttering that he was tired of us. Just as we were going out, the other patient came in, returning from a visit to a friend. He was a Polish prince, bearing a great historical name, but suffering from weakness of mind and occasional delirious fancies that he was an object of persecution. He was a man of excellent education, with the