"I recollect," he writes,
"seeing, years ago, at the prison for idiots and madmen, at Bicetre,
near Paris, a poor wretch bent down under the bondage of his
imprisonment and his personal infirmity, to whom one of our party gave
a halfpennyworth of snuff in a cornet or 'screw' of paper. The kindness
was too much ... He cried in an anguish of delight and gratitude; if
anybody gave you and me a thousand a year, or saved our lives, we could
not be so affected."
A striking exhibition of fine feeling on the part of a patient was
brought to my attention by an assistant physician whom I met while
visiting a State Hospital in Massachusetts. It seems that the woman in
question had, at her worst, caused an endless amount of annoyance by
indulging in mischievous acts which seemed to verge on malice. At that
time, therefore, no observer would have credited her with the exquisite
sensibility she so signally displayed when she had become convalescent
and was granted a parole which permitted her to walk at will about the
hospital grounds.
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