Diary Written In The Provincial Lunatic Asylum

DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "Diary Written in the Provincial Lunatic Asylum" by Mary Huestis Pengilly. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.

Diary Written in the Provincial Lunatic Asylum by Mary Huestis Pengilly Diary from a Lunatic Asylum December.--They will not allow me to go home, and I must write these things down for fear I forget. It will help to pass the time away. It is very hard to endure this prison life, and know that my sons think me insane when I am not. How unkind Mrs. Mills is today; does she think this sort of treatment is for the good of our health? I begged for milk today, and she can't spare me any; she has not enough for all the old women, she says. I don't wish to deprive any one of that which they require, but have I not a right to all I require to feed me and make me well? All I do need is good nourishing food, and I know better than any one else can what I require to build me up and make me as I was before I met with this strange change of condition. I remember telling the Doctor, on his first visit to my room, that I only needed biscuit and milk and beef tea to make me well. He rose to his feet and said, "I know better than any other man." That was all I heard him say, and he walked out, leaving me without a word of sympathy, or a promise that I should have anything. I say to myself (as I always talk aloud to myself when not well), "You don't know any more than this old woman does." I take tea with Mrs. Mills; I don't like to look at those patients who look so wretched.

This little book is humbly dedicated to the Province of New Brunswick, and the State of Massachusetts, by one who has had so sad an experience in this, the sixty-second year of her age, that she feels it to be her imperative duty to lay it before the public in such a manner as shall reach the hearts of the people in this her native Province, as also the people of Massachusetts, with whom she had a refuge since driven from her own home by the St. John fire of 1877. She sincerely hopes it may be read in every State of the Union, as well as throughout the Dominion of Canada, that it may help to show the inner workings of their Hospitals and Asylums, and prompt them to search out better methods of conducting them, as well for the benefit of the superintendent as the patient.Notice: This Book is published by Historical Books Limited (www.publicdomain.org.uk) as a Public Domain Book, if you have any inquiries, requests or need any help you can just send an email to [email protected] This book is found as a public domain and free book based on various online catalogs, if you think there are any problems regard copyright issues please contact us immediately via [email protected]

They will not allow me to go home, and I must write these things down for fear I forget. It will help to pass the time away. It is very hard to endure this prison life, and know that my sons think me insane when I am not. How unkind Mrs. Mills is today; does she think this sort of treatment is for the good of our health? I begged for milk today, and she can't spare me any; she has not enough for all the old women, she says. I don't wish to deprive any one of that which they require, but have I not a right to all I require to feed me and make me well? All I do need is good nourishing food, and I know better than any one else can what I require to build me up and make me as I was before I met with this strange change of condition. I remember telling the Doctor, on his first visit to my room, that I only needed biscuit and milk and beef tea to make me well. He rose to his feet and said, "I know better than any other man." - Taken from "Diary From The Lunatic Asylum" written by Mary Huestis Pengilly

Social history is only one kind of history. Still, it is exactly the type of history that disability demands to be told, especially due to the universality of the disability experience. Doris and Frieda Zames remind us that “handicapism” is the only “ism” we all will experience if we live long enough. Although disability will always arguably be about physical differences (of body, mind, intellect, personality, etc.), its universal nature means that it should logically be the king/queen of identity politics, while it has long been the pauper. This story helps explain why that was and is today, and what America’s unique and sometimes unpleasant role in the story is. This text attempts not just to represent the American experience with disability but the American experience. The further we move away from 1990 and the passage of the ADA, the less that demarcation seems to be distinct and dichotomous, and the more America seems to be an abject case study of identity possibility in flux, placed squarely at the intersection of the rational and irrational, the qualitative and quantitative, the old and new, the individual and collective, and at the nexus of classic liberalism and neomodernism. In fact, the ADA was reauthorized in 2008, an indication of the constructivist nature of disability policy. This book is intended to be useful and informative, whether as a classroom textbook or as a conversation starter on the coffee table. It also uses the unique tools of the social historian to tell the story.