He Wanted the Moon

by Mimi Baird,Eve Claxton

  Once, after Tiny had fed me two or three spoonfuls of breakfast cereal, my mouth was so full that I couldn’t accept any more and I turned my head to one side as the next spoonful came toward me.

  “Don’t you want your breakfast?” Tiny asked in his usual booming, insulting voice.

  “Oh don’t bother about feeding me!” I replied, even though I was hungry.

  “That’s all we need to know,” said Tiny and left the room, taking my breakfast.

  He did not return.

  Once when Mrs. Delaney was feeding me my Sunday dinner, she fed me so fast that I could neither enjoy the food nor swallow it fast enough. I began to vomit.

  Thus on many occasions, hunger was added to thirst and cramps, the pain of loneliness and incarceration, the agony of restraints, and the sudden details of torture which a staff of state hospital psychiatrists can devise.

  AFTER some several days of this torment, Tiny Hayes, Mr. Burns, a powerful attendant, and a patient came in my room. They freed me from the bed and, leaving the straightjacket still on me, they took me—partly dragged me—to the bathroom. I felt particularly brittle, perhaps even filled with hatred. When I was brought back, the straightjacket was removed, and there was a pack already laid for me.

  I backed into a corner.

  “It seems to me that I’ve had enough of this sort of thing,” I said.

  A wave of resentment swept over me. I clenched my fists and decided to fight rather than endure this agony any longer. Quickly, I turned toward the group and, with my blood boiling in anger and my eyes betraying the sudden change of temper, I advanced in a swift powerful movement of aggression. All four men turned pale and fell back. They showed surprise and real fear. Without striking a blow, the moral victory was mine.

  I let my hands drop.

  “All right, I’ll go through with another pack,” I said.

  The four men came back cautiously as I lay down on the cold wet sheets. Two of them lined up on my left with Tiny Hayes at my right shoulder and Mr. Burns next to him near my feet. My head was raised off the bed. Suddenly I saw a long black rounded object coming down toward my head. My astonishment was so great that I made no attempt to duck away, though I was free to do so. I remained motionless as the instrument struck me on the right side of the forehead. The blow was painful. As the black object returned to Mr. Burns’ corner it looked as if it were bent in the middle. At first I thought it was a piece of lead pipe, but later I learned that Mr. Burns used a piece of heavy rubber hose on the patients and carried it in his pocket. The blow that he delivered to my forehead produced in its right upper portion an area of soreness with excoriation and swelling. A large vein in this area was damaged and went into a state of varicosity, protruding conspicuously. The soreness lasted for two to three weeks and the excoriation for almost a month. After eight months, the vein has begun to return to its normal proportions. The staff psychiatrist, Dr. Boyd, examined the area but said nothing.

  ON Sunday, two or three weeks after my admission to Westborough, at around 10 a.m. it was announced to me that visitors were on their way over. I lay there in my pack: cold, hungry, tired, weak. After a wait of ten minutes or so, I heard footsteps in the hallway and, through the gap in the partly opened door, I could see Gretta and our family physician, Dr. Porter, walking along together. They came into the room and greeted me. Gretta kissed me. We talked. Both Dr. Porter and Gretta kept on their winter coats. The room was frigid. The ground outside was covered with snow. A cold wind was blowing.

  “Do you want a divorce?” Gretta asked.

  This question struck me as a very serious one to put to a person supposedly ill. It came at a particularly difficult time. I thought for a few seconds.

  “Yes,” I said.

  Dr. Porter then immediately made some remark about how to obtain the divorce and the expediency of employing “cruel and abusive treatment” as a basis for the procedure. The conversation ran on about this and that.

  I began to talk about the barbarities of the treatments I had been given.

  “Well, Gretta, I guess we’d better go,” Dr. Porter said.

  This remark gave me an even stronger feeling of having to battle all alone, with no help to be expected from friends or relatives.

  Dr. Porter asked whether I wanted him to leave the room so I could talk with Gretta alone. At first I asked him not to leave and then, in a little while, I requested that he leave us alone for a few minutes. Obligingly he left the room and stood outside talking with Mr. Burns.

  “I’ll miss you a lot!” I told Gretta.

  My eyes filled with tears that fell in copious amounts and rolled down my cheeks. Gretta began to cry, too, and as she leaned forward to kiss me, her tears fell upon my eyelids and cheeks.

  After we had been alone together only a few minutes, Dr. Porter returned. He seemed upset to observe us both weeping. He and Gretta hurriedly said goodbye, and they departed. The total visit was a short one.

  At dinnertime, I was extremely hungry but also lonely, blue, discouraged, cold, and tired. A full tray of food was brought in and laid on a table near me. It was a fairly good Sunday meal with chicken that actually had an appetizing aroma. The attendant then left and was gone for about three quarters of an hour. This trick of leaving my Sunday meal there to grow cold—while arousing my appetite and neglecting to feed me—I supposed was part of my punishment. Before the end of an hour, however, the attendant returned and fed me. I made no complaint.

  During the remainder of the day I lay in the pack quietly without moving, only as necessary to relieve in part the agony of calf muscle cramps. I lay there, still as death, never calling for water nor making any requests at all. I made no attempt to get out of the pack. It seemed wise to yield quietly to the treatment. At about seven in the evening, I was released from the pack but transferred immediately to a straightjacket. I said nothing. I cooperated to the best of my ability.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THESE days of constant restraint were the darkest of my life. I cannot imagine exploring greater depths of discouragement and hopelessness. I knew then—and I know now—that I became delirious in a way previously unknown in the course of any of my illnesses. These spells of delirium were brought on by the harsh treatments employed. I am sure of this.

  During the hours of my flights from reality, I passed through phases quite foreign to anything I have ever experienced before. As I lay there bound down, I lost all sense of time and season and imagined that scores of hundreds of years were passing by. I imagined that some strange power of eternal life had been bestowed upon me and radiated to those who came within my immediate encasement. From day to day, nurses and attendants seemed to grow younger. I felt sure, however, that my friends and relatives on the outside were long ago dead and that I would never see them again.

  My thoughts wandered with all anchorage eliminated. It seemed that I must have traveled back through subconscious impressions imposed by every stage of the evolutionary tree. My dreams and thoughts focused upon the origin of man, the nature of his soul and the nature of eternal life. I visualized the migration of a tiger-like creature that flew on silver wings from a distant planet to earth, thousands of years ago. This imaginary creature was interpreted as a forerunner of man, and looked like a saber-toothed tiger, with a coat and wings of silver. I could see these creatures stalking prey, their tongues out-stretched in hunger and rage. The tigers struck down smaller animals and ate entire carcasses, sucking blood, voraciously.

  In my dreams I could see the saber-toothed tigers as they took to upright positions, a force of gravity slowly changing the shape of their heads and other parts of their bodies, developing into savage, primitive men. These men rode large, powerful, and very fleet horses with hair growing to great lengths. These riders of that ancient age used no saddle or bridle but buried their legs and hands into their horses’ long hair, and each man seemed to become a part of the horse he rode. The hair, which was twelve to eighteen inches long, was very fine and
quite translucent, and carried a magnetic field. The lines of the field radiated in all directions, covering a space many yards beyond the dimensions of the horse. It seemed that these magnetic waves were transversed by the rays of the sun and that the horses were able to travel along beams of sunshine like a railroad on its track. I could see these horses and their riders migrating by the thousands to and from earth, and going off vast distances from the earth, visiting Mars and other portions of the universe. These dreams were so vivid that I believed they were a true reflection of some primitive state of the earth, leaving behind recollections in the vast subterranean passages of the human mind to which one could find access in certain mental states.

  I dreamed about the soul and discovered that it was a magnetic field, partly shaped like a human body, but with dimensions far greater. It seemed that nobody could have life without these magnetic fields of which there were only so many available. As the child took shape in its mother’s womb, such a soul would migrate into it. Other souls would wander off to seek a new type of existence on some far away planet. Conceived in this way, the soul and eternal life seemed comprehensible qualities, and understandable. Such a soul living on forever could see and hear and think, but could not be seen or heard. On the basis of this conception, it is easy to explain why the souls of departed ones do not come back and appear to us. In my dreams, these souls came back and sought out loved ones, but could not make themselves seen or felt. However, this did not make them unhappy and thus free from all earthly lives, they soared away to play among sunbeams and moonbeams and wander eternally through the universe, finding constant companions. Others chose to live life again and found their way into newborn babies. I found much happiness and reassurance in these dreams about the soul and eternity.

  My thoughts dwelled upon world affairs: the war and peace and how to deal with Russia and Japan and Germany. I must have talked constantly about the ceaseless flow of ideas concerning these enemies. I pictured a peace conference which would deal in a Christian manner with both Germany and Japan, allowing these countries to choose their own leaders, subjecting them to no humiliation, no poverty, to ensure peace by some far-reaching educational system and not by force of arms alone. There is no way to know whether the development of the science of destruction will make it possible for human beings to destroy each other completely, but it does not require much use of imagination to visualize the horrors of the wars to come, robot bombs lending greatly to this vision of the future.

  I talked out loud at nighttime, alone in my room, about these thoughts, dreamed about the use of Christian propaganda to help win the war, perhaps employing skywriting to replace leaflets as a means of reaching the common man in Germany and Japan and later Russia. I visualized a near future date when skywriting could be done in flashing colors at night, with music, thunder, and other sound effects.

  DURING the next several days I lay constantly in restraints, never moving, never making any requests, cooperating silently. Some of the patients came to my window and tried to tease me into getting out of restraints. I took no notice of this and made no reply, kept my eyes closed, lay still, slept very little. After three or four days the restraints were gradually used less and less and finally discontinued. A table and chair were brought into my room. I entered a slightly more normal way of being. My secretary sent several boxes of sharpened pencils and some paper. A small amount of additional paper was obtainable at the hospital. I began to write this story and to describe my experiences, my dreams, my thoughts.

  Then, one Friday, three or four weeks after my admission to Westborough, I was told that visitors were coming to see me. Immediately I went to the bathroom to wash my face in cold water, collect myself, and comb my hair. I was still dressed in my sackcloth and ashes hospital underwear to my ankles, slippers, and a drab bathrobe. As I darted into the bathroom, I could see coming down the hall Gretta and Dr. Means, my friend and former faculty advisor at Harvard Medical School. They were waiting for me when I came back to my room. Greetings all around were warm and friendly. I kissed Gretta and we sat down to talk. I was in good shape, only mildly manic, but I had just drunk a cup of coffee and this made me very talkative. I read them letters that I had written and then gave them to Gretta to mail. I talked too much.

  Gretta seemed upset that they would not give me my own clothes.

  “The whole plan of treatment has been brutal in the extreme, but I don’t mind it,” I told them. “I write complaints to my lawyer, because I think it’s the logical thing to do—but I really don’t mind it at all.”

  Gretta wept a little.

  “He’s such a good sport about it all,” she said.

  Passing comments were made about the divorce. We talked on at length. I related the chain of events leading up to my manic depression cycles—going back to the high points of the original development of the attacks.

  I could see tears in Dr. Means’ eyes.

  Mr. Burns, the attendant, came to the door and I introduced him.

  “You’re cooling off all right,” Dr. Means told me. “Your chief problem is to stay on the right side of Dr. Boyd. He’s your chief critic at present.”

  Dr. Boyd was my appointed psychiatrist at Westborough. Later I spoke of the harsh treatments I had received, saying, “I think that Dr. Boyd should be put through these treatments so that he’ll know what he’s doing when he prescribes them in this way.”

  “That’s logical,” said Dr. Means.

  The total visit wasn’t long.

  As I walked down the hall with Gretta and Dr. Means, I slipped my arm around Gretta’s shoulders and she slipped her arm around my waist. When we got to the nurse’s office, Dr. Means stepped aside to tell a joke to Mr. Burns. As Gretta and I stood there she seemed like such a child, and her arm around my waist seemed so small and so delicate.

  I turned to her and said, “I’ll always want you to be at my parties and to help me.”

  She looked at me and smiled. Dr. Means shook hands and went out the door first.

  As Gretta went through the door she stopped and we kissed. The tears were streaming down her cheeks and, as I came away from her, I could see great sorrow in her face. Mr. Burns said that she cried all the way downstairs.

  After the visit by Gretta and Dr. Means, no one came to see me for about six weeks. During this time Saturdays and Sundays seemed especially long because they were days when so many patients had visitors. Often on Sundays a nurse or an attendant would say, “Dr. Baird, you will surely have visitors today.” I soon learned that when this remark was made, no visitors ever came. On days when visitors did come, I usually learned of it because someone said, “You will have visitors in a few minutes. They are on the way over.”

  Perhaps Gretta didn’t come to see me because it upset her to do so. Perhaps other people didn’t come because the hospital authorities wouldn’t let them. The effect of having no visitors was agonizing. No greater loneliness or despair can be imagined.

  Perry’s sketch of the ward at Westborough.

  CHAPTER SIX

  AS soon as I was beyond the period of restraints I began to write a great many letters to friends and relatives. A hospital ruling allowed only two letters per week. I got around this by enclosing many letters in my one letter to Gretta, and by requesting that she forward them. Though she had never done so previously, Gretta began to forward practically all of my letters.

  I wrote several letters to my friends among Boston physicians and described the conditions at Westborough. None of these physicians seemed to show either interest or sympathy.

  One wrote: “The sooner you start cooperating with the Westborough authorities, the sooner we’ll be seeing you again.”

  Another wrote that the abusive treatment I received from attendants was probably due to my own attitude towards them.

  Several times I wrote to Bob Fleming, the new psychiatrist who had taken over my case when my former psychiatrist, Dr. Tillotson, gave it up. Since I had been unceremoniously dumpe
d into a cell at Westborough, I had had no communication from Bob. I wrote him several times. I received no reply. I wrote asking that he give up my case unless he was willing to do something to help me out. I wrote my lawyer and asked him to consult other friends of mine among Boston psychiatrists, and see if one of them would take over. I also wrote directly to the following psychiatrists: Dr. Donald J. Macpherson and Dr. Colket Carver. Colket wrote me, “I’d rather be your friend than your psychiatrist.”

  My lawyer consulted with Dr. Donald Macpherson about several matters. Donald promised to come out to see me—and did so at the end of eight or nine weeks. I wrote to a close friend, Paul Chandler, and asked him to come to see me. He wrote and said that he would, but he never did. I wrote Dr. Ben Ragle and asked him if he’d take over my care. He replied that he made it a rule not to accept close friends as patients.

  I cast about in every direction for whatever help I could find. I found none.

  I pray to God that in the future I shall be able to remember that once one has crossed the line from the normal walks of life into a psychopathic hospital, one is separated from friends and relatives by walls thicker than stone; walls of prejudice and superstition. It may be hoped that psychopathic hospitals will someday become a refuge for the mentally ill, and a place where they may hope to recover through channels of wise and gentle care. But the modern psychopathic hospitals I have known are direct descendants of ancient jails like Bedlam, and I believe that they do harm, not good. The brutalities that one encounters in state and city psychopathic hospitals must be the by-product of the fear and superstition with which mentally ill patients are regarded. For the present, the best one can hope to do is to stay out of these places, pity those confined there, and to do what one can to accelerate the slow process of mental hospital reorganization.