Narrations of confinement are often read by persons who wish to ridicule the contents, remarks the author, a minister of good standing for many years. This was one reason out of many that made him hesitate putting his hand to the present work. He nevertheless wrote this narrative down and had it published in order to open the eyes of the citizens of New York State. This critique was written three years after he left the ‘captivity’ of the lunatic asylum at Utica, a state institution. Most patients, he maintains, were brought there by force, against their will. “A patient was a blank in all matters of opinion.” The patient was not treated as a moral agent. Attendants there were generally overly aggressive; and one skinny man was bathed in cold water so roughly that he died hours later. Other such cases are related in this narrative as well.

Hiram Chase’s vignettes on particular cases are especially interesting. I wish he would have divulged more of what he left out in order to give more glimpses into minds that have gone adrift. “Should I record all the thrilling and ludicrous incidents which happened upon this hall and others during my stay there,” he says, “they would fill an octavo of a thousand pages. My object is not to give a history of the institution, but simply my own narrative, noticing perhaps now and then a circumstance which may fall in my way concerning other patients.”

As unsettling as some of the anecdotes are that Hiram Chase has preserved for posterity, the idea of an asylum is not a bad one. We need them once again more than ever. We need better ones than we have had; but we need them badly. We need them for incorrigible drug addicts, for example. Orderly, ethically run asylums would save many lives and be good for society. Funds for running them could be appropriated from moneys presently set aside for the abortion mills and drug rehab programs. Privately run asylums could be erected to house persons who can afford to pay for their own mental care. Harms done in the past should not stop us from healing in the present.

Not only has ‘Two Years and Four Months in a Lunatic Asylum’ caused me to reflect on the mental disorders that are peculiar to our own day and what to do about persons who suffer from them, it is a worthwhile look into asylum life in 19th century America.

Elaine Webb reads well, and has an attractive cerebral accent.

This book is set during the 1860s. It's rather sad to hear how the asylum was used as a dumping ground for the old, the depressed and the eccentric.

Elaine does an excellent job reading this book for Librivox. The sound quality is a bit tinny, but nothing that affects comprehension of the text.