Friends have said to me: "Well, what is to be done when a patient runs
amuck?" The best answer I can make is: "Do nothing to make him run
amuck." Psychiatrists have since told me that had I had an attendant
with the wisdom and ability to humor me and permit me to keep my
priceless corn cobs, the fight in question, and the worse events that
followed, would probably not have occurred--not that day, nor ever, had
I at all times been properly treated by those in charge of me.
So again I found myself in the violent ward--but this time not because
of any desire to investigate it. Art and literature being now more
engrossing than my plans for reform, I became, in truth, an unwilling
occupant of a room and a ward devoid of even a suggestion of the
aesthetic. The room itself was clean, and under other circumstances
might have been cheerful. It was twelve feet long, seven feet wide, and
twelve high. A cluster of incandescent lights, enclosed in a
semi-spherical glass globe, was attached to the ceiling.
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