Journal of No. 118

This book is the result of investigating the possessions of institutionalized patients from Willard State (Mental) Hospital in New York. Possessions left, forgotten, in an attic for decades. In addition to the book, there is actually a very nice website with a fair amount of information and photos. The authors have done a great job sleuthing down the identities of the owners, and building up as much of a biography as is possible. Most of them were institutionalized in the first half of the 20th century, though a few lived on into the 60s and 70s. So collectively, they lived through treatment changes from 'warehousing', to occupational therapy, to shock therapy, to antipsychotic medicines.

The variety of stories is impressive. A Filipino who came to the US in 1907, an Italian lady who thought she was a princess, an African American veteran, and the guy who had a Jesus complex and also a Secret Service record for being arrested outside the White House, since he had an idea that he was married to President Truman's daughter.

A lot of it makes for very interesting reading. However, the book actually angered me quite a bit here and there. Now, I am probably the last person who needs to be convinced about the shortcomings and abuses in the treatment of the insane in the early 20th century. I wrote the book on it. OK, a book on it.

But author Darby Penney "is a national leader in the human rights movement for people with psychiatric disabilities" and this comes through as a real bias in the book. At every turn, she minimizes the very real mental problems these people had. Denial is not just a river in Egypt. I mean it's one thing to point out things that people at the time should have known, but Penney takes the hospital to task for keeping a person institutionalized merely for hearing voices, pointing out the existence of the Hearing Voices Movement, which takes it as a foundational point that "Hearing voices is not in itself a sign of mental illness." Not only is this anachronistic, but even today the HVM is a fringe movement at best in mental health.

Here's an illustrative excerpt:

[quotes are from medical observations of patient: Marie] "At times is assaultive," "usually remains alone," "smiles and responds when spoken to," "has a sexual trend." In December 1920, things seemed to take an even more bizarre turn. She began to claim that "there were live chickens inside her hatched from eggs she had eaten." Becoming more suspicious, especially about the food given to her, she took to scraping her bread carefully before eating it. And on March 24, 1922, she had a physical altercation with two female attendants, "pounding (one) severely" and nearly tearing the uniform off the other one, which landed her on a more 'secure' ward in Chapin Hall. We can't know what prompted this altercation, which was described as an 'assault' on the staff member. Such attacks are rarely unprovoked.

(My emphasis.) I mean, if someone gets pounded severely, surely that's an assault, with no need for scare quotes.

For the record, the Taint of Madness game stats for Willard State Hospital are: 94% survival rate (per year), 32% cure rate, 4% release rate. It looks about average for NY state, which was one of the better places to be in the country. The mismatch between the cure rate and release rate does support one main theme of the book -- that patients who seemed to no longer have significant symptoms were still kept institutionalized, rather than being released. but it's hard to trust the book's selective quotations. Just as another example, you can see where the focus of attention is in this sentence, "Aside from repeating psychopathological terms such as blocking, ideas of reference, paranoia, defective insight and judgment, and hallucinations, he was noted to be a good worker and more pleasant and agreeable than before."

This is one of the two big cornerstones of the conflict thesis that science and religion are ineluctably bound for conflict. Unfortunately, this book is far inferior (in my opinion) to Andrew Dickson White's A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (not that it doesn't have problems of its own).

Anyway, despite the title, Draper's book does not actually deal with the conflict between religion and science all that much. Primarily, it bashes Roman Catholicism. An enjoyable pastime to be sure, but really... There's probably ten times as much ink spilt over papal infallibility as over the Galileo affair. But still some interesting things, especially some perspective from 1874. Check out those New Atheists!

WHOEVER has had an opportunity of becoming acquainted with the mental condition of the intelligent classes in Europe and America, must have perceived that there is a great and rapidly-increasing departure from the public religious faith, and that, while among the more frank this divergence is not concealed, there is a far more extensive and far more dangerous secession, private and unacknowledged. So wide-spread and so powerful is this secession, that it can neither be treated with contempt nor with punishment. It cannot be extinguished by derision, by vituperation, or by force. The time is rapidly approaching when it will give rise to serious political results.

I was unaware of the virgin birth of Plato.

He does have a way with words, betimes:

The portraits of our friends, or landscape views, may be hidden on the sensitive. surface from the eye, but they are ready to make their appearance as soon as proper developers are resorted to. A spectre is concealed on a silver or glassy surface until, by our necromancy, we make it come forth into the visible world.

I found it weird that Draper refers to Copernicus as a Prussian. Though it seems this comes from him having been born in Royal Prussia, a province of Poland. The connection between Royal Prussia and Prussia Prussia are complex enough that I gave up on untangling the tale.

Pale Blue Dot crossed with an indifferent universe: "Seen from the sun, the earth dwindles away to a mere speck, a mere dust-mote glistening in his beams. If the reader wishes a more precise valuation, let him hold a page of this book a couple of feet from his eye; then let him consider one of its dots or full stops; that dot is several hundred times larger in surface than is the earth as seen from the sun! Of what consequence, then, can such an almost imperceptible particle be? One might think that it could be removed or even annihilated, and yet never be missed. Of what consequence is one of those human monads, of whom more than a thousand millions swarm on the surface of this all but invisible speck, and of a million of whom scarcely one will leave a trace that he has ever existed? Of what consequence is man, his pleasures or his pains?"

"A horse, whose master had taught him many tricks, was tried at Lisbon in 1601, found guilty of being, possessed by the devil, and was burnt."

There must be more to that story. In a quick search, the only thing I've seen that doesn't clearly come from Draper is this from some Theosophist website: "Granger tells the story, describing it as having occurred in his time. The poor animal "had been taught to tell the spots upon cards, and the hour of the day by the watch. Horse and owner were both indicted by the sacred office for dealing with the Devil, and both were burned, with a great ceremony of auto-da-fe, at Lisbon, in 1601, as wizards!""

Draper bashes a papal encyclical from 1864, and with good reason:

From which totally false idea of social government they do not fear to foster that erroneous opinion, most fatal in its effects on the Catholic Church and the salvation of souls, called by Our Predecessor, Gregory XVI, an "insanity,"2 viz., that "liberty of conscience and worship is each man's personal right, which ought to be legally proclaimed and asserted in every rightly constituted society; and that a right resides in the citizens to an absolute liberty, which should be restrained by no authority whether ecclesiastical or civil, whereby they may be able openly and publicly to manifest and declare any of their ideas whatever, either by word of mouth, by the press, or in any other way."

Talking about the fight between the Prussian government (back in the 19th century) and the Church: "The Bishop of Ermeland declared that he would not obey the laws of the state if they touched the Church. The government stopped the payment of his salary."

Ah, the good old days in America: "In America the temporal and the spiritual have been absolutely divorced--the latter is not permitted to have any thing to do with affairs of state, though in all other respects liberty is conceded to it."

And finally:

Then has it in truth come to this, that Roman Christianity and Science are recognized by their respective adherents as being absolutely incompatible; they cannot exist together; one must yield to the other; mankind must make its choice--it cannot have both. SCIENCE AND FAITH. While such is, perhaps, the issue as regards Catholicism, a reconciliation of the Reformation with Science is not only possible, but would easily take place, if the Protestant Churches would only live up to the maxim taught by Luther, and established by so many years of war. That maxim is, the right of private interpretation of the Scriptures. It was the foundation of intellectual liberty. But, if a personal interpretation of the book of Revelation is permissible, how can it be denied in the case of the book of Nature? In the misunderstandings that have taken place, we must ever bear in mind the infirmities of men. The generations that immediately followed the Reformation may perhaps be excused for not comprehending the full significance of their cardinal principle, and for not on all occasions carrying it into effect. When Calvin caused Servetus, to be burnt, he was animated, not by the principles of the Reformation, but by those of Catholicism, from which he had not been able to emancipate himself completely. And when the clergy of influential Protestant confessions have stigmatized the investigators of Nature as infidels and atheists, the same may be said.

See, it's all the Catholics' fault. And even when it isn't, it still is.

More.

Marblehead Pottery, founded in 1904 in Marblehead, MA -- which served as a model for Lovecraft's Kingsport -- by Dr. Herbert Hall "as an element in therapy for women with nervous disorders."

The Bad Astronomer tipped me off that a comet may smash into Mars next year (but probably won't).

It's an interesting situation. The comet orbits the Sun the opposite direction (though also at an odd angle with respect to the plane of the solar system, it seems). This means if it hits, it'll be more like a head-on crash on the freeway than getting rear-ended. And it's on a hyperbolic orbit, so it's going a bit faster than you might otherwise expect. And that also means it hasn't been around these parts often (if ever), which means it hasn't lost much of its original mass like old comets have. Which all adds up to big kinetic energy if it does happen to hit Mars:

Doing a rough calculation, I get an explosive yield of roughly one billion megatons: That’s a million billion tons of TNT exploding. Or, if you prefer, an explosion about 25 million times larger than the largest nuclear weapon ever tested on Earth.

Now, probably this thing's gonna miss. But... couldn't we... maybe... make it hit? It'd be awesome! Think of it as training for that mission to make an asteroid miss the Earth. Yeah, I'm sure pushing a fluffy falling-apart slushball wouldn't exactly be easy, but if my mad plan succeeds, just think of the fireworks!

Okay, okay, but hopefully it'll still put on a pretty show.

---

Oh, and speaking of comets, Comet Panstarrs has brightened up recently, and is already visible with the naked eye in the Southern Hemisphere. It ought to get a little brighter still and will soon be in Northern skies at sunset.

One of those 3 AM thoughts...

Sure, there are lots of girl names that are flowers. Too many to list.

But Olive seems fairly unique as a vegetable (ok, fruit if you wanna get all botanical up in here).

There really aren't that many fruit-names, either. There aren't too many Apples, or Pears, or Oranges, or Kumquats. I mean... Cherry is probably more of a professional name for those who use it, if you know what I mean. Actually, now that I've fired up the Name Voyager, it looks like Cherry had a hey-day in the 1940s.

Maybe Olive is more named after the tree, but... there aren't that many tree names, either. Myrtle died out in the 1960s, and Willow has only just emerged.

Olive seems to stand nearly alone as a fruit-vegetable name.

Why do we name our girl-children after the sexual organs of plants, but not after their seedy little fetuses (except for Olive)?

Olive is even making a little bit of a comeback.

Also, I disregard any baby-name list that suggests a possible girls' name is Banana.

North Korean scientists have verified "a lair of the unicorn rode by King Tongmyong, founder of the Koguryo Kingdom (B.C. 277-A.D. 668)," confirming historical reports.

This also must be a shot in the arm for Biblical literalists, who have been confounded by smart alecky comments about unicorns in the Bible. Of course King Tongmyong's unicorn was a little Asian looking, but then again the Bible doesn't say much about the appearance of the unicorn anyway.

Top Eleven Non-Solutions to the Final Challenge in the Smithsonian's Great American History Puzzle:

11 UCLA Test Diminution
10 Seminal Duct Tuition
9 At Unnoticed Stimuli
8 Mild Cautious Intent
7 Minute Tidal Suction
6 Diatonic Minuet Slut
5 Demonic Nautilus Tit
4 Lunatic Smut Edition
3 Loud Titanium Insect
2 Militant Nude Coitus
( #1 )

So I've been prosecuting the culture wars in the comment section at Religion Today, and the following exchange between me and someone from Christian Comic Books occurred:

CCB: The rise of non-believers in the West is a woe as it brings only moral decadence.

Me: I'm a non-believer and I haven't brought any moral decadence. Though I did bring donuts to work today. Maybe that counts?

CCB: Don't make the already-full people fatter by bringing donuts. That wasn't even ethical.

"The FBI has evidence that for the past 15 years someone in Syracuse [NY] has been panicking office workers with powder-filled letters threatening an anthrax attack.The FBI has evidence that for the past 15 years someone in Syracuse has been panicking office workers with powder-filled letters threatening an anthrax attack. ... One peculiarity stands out about the letters — many of them contain passages from the writings of H.P. Lovecraft".

I don't agree with the assessment that the eyeball "might be a reference to a specific Lovecraft character, Cthulhu ... [who has] tentacles coming out of his face and one all-seeing eye." I think that may be confusing the references to 'cyclopean' architecture and even a reference to Polyphemus: "... the titan Thing from the stars slavered and gibbered like Polypheme cursing the fleeing ship of Odysseus. Then, bolder than the storied Cyclops, great Cthulhu slid greasily into the water and began to pursue..."

The FBI flyer offers a reward of up to $10,000 for info. Sadly, the images don't seem to show any of the Lovecraft-related material. Not that that would be likely to help much.