Gracefully Insane by Alex Beam Read Free Book Online Page A

published in 1841:
    We parry and fend the approach of our fellow-man by compliments, by gossip, by amusement, by affairs.... I knew a man who under a certain religious frenzy cast off this drapery, and spoke to the conscience
of every person he encountered, and that with great insight and beauty. At first, all men agreed he was mad. But persisting, he attained to the advantage of bringing every man of his acquaintance into true relations with him. ...
    To stand in true relations with men in a false age is worth a fit of insanity, is it not?

    Patient records at McLean are now more closely guarded than they were thirty years ago, when the record room was open to all staff doctors and some valuable Sigmund Freud letters went missing. The diaries of therapeutic regimens, sometimes spanning decades and comprising hundreds of pages, make for fascinating reading. Some records, like that of Boston’s John Warren, are works of literature, as insightful and revealing of mid-nineteenth-century Boston as James Boswell’s diary is of Samuel Johnson’s London.
    This John Warren was the son of the above-mentioned John Collins Warren and grand-nephew of the hero of Bunker Hill. Not only did John Collins Warren lead the unsuccessful subscription for the new hospital in 1810; he is also credited with first using ether as a medical anesthetic. A famous painting by Robert Hinckley depicts Dr. Warren operating with ether under the Bulfinch-designed dome at the Massachusetts General Hospital. To the surrounding doctors and gawkers, Warren memorably proclaimed: “Gentlemen! This is no humbug!” 4

    John Collins Warren had several sons, the eldest being the future McLean patient John. But the father favored the next-born, Mason, who followed in his footsteps and became a surgeon. Mason, however, proved to be sickly, and, not so surprisingly, his father’s regimen of purgings and archaic medicines did not do much to improve his health. The father often assigned his eldest son to care for the beloved younger brother, and during a therapeutic trip to Cuba, John Warren’s raucous and undisciplined behavior landed him in trouble with tavern keepers, prostitutes, and the local police. On his return in 1841, his father packed him off to McLean, where he was to spend the next thirty-four years of his life. John’s name was expunged from the family Bible; he had become an official nonperson. One modern psychiatrist who has reviewed Warren’s record notes dryly that if he was not crazy when he was admitted, he was certainly crazy by the time McLean was through with him.
    Here is the log book entry for John Warren’s first night at McLean, April 19, 1841:
    Admitted age 33; unmarried.
    No business, nor property in his own right.
    This gentleman is the eldest son of Dr. John C. Warren of Boston.
His history in one sense is soon told & he has been a true son of Ishmael, with “his hand against every man and every man’s hand against him.” Such has been his strange and erratic course of life, that it may safely be doubted whether he ever did a sane action . The only satisfactory explanation of life is he was constitutionally insane and never recovered .
    To enumerate his peculiarities of thinking, feeling and acting would be to describe his whole life and therefore impossible. Naturally brilliant and active, he was never disposed to apply his mind. Impatient, restless, mischievous, yet no settled malice, disobedient to his parents, yet of kind and tender feelings. Fond of broils, fights, and daring deeds yet not intemperate and noisy.
    He seemed determined to have his own way and succeeds by stern, daredevil manner with “actions suited” to his words. Was always in trouble, skulking about to avoid detection: chased by sheriffs for assaults, and debts: unhappy at home and shunned and detested abroad. Once stabbed a man and fled his country . While in Europe spent all the money his friends could furnish and all he could borrow and get on the Credit