Wessington Springs herald. (Wessington Springs, Aurora County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1891, 1886-04-09
III MIND DISEASED.
An Asylum Physician's Discoveries IN tns
study of Unbalanced brains.

SAu AAS ~ =
study of Unbalanced brains.
A walk through the female wards OF
! the insane hospital with DR.. Fletcher
is amusing, rather than saddcning.
Some sing Nm songs, others beg g bite
from his dried and well-worn plug o.
tobacco, others are determined to dance
| with him, and all look on his coming
with pleasure. They call him pet
names, as Uncle" doc" and Pop
sy." Sunday they hunt him for candy.
Others beg him to write home for
them. A few beg to be taken home.
They cut some strange antics. Not
long since a female patient on the up
per floor kicked out the ward door
panel, crept through, and at midnight,
climbed the tireman's ladder to the
loft, where, though it was dark as pitch.
she crept about among the rafters and
steam-pipes, until she came to the ele-
vator-well, seventy feet deep. She
seized the wire cable. slid down two
stories, and then got off onto the screen
door, ut least three feet from the cable.
Here she hung, with fingers and toes
in the meshes, until she was discovered
by a quick-witted woman-one of the
ward attendants - who was going
through the passage and heard a
scratching on the wires. The attend
ant rushed into the clothes-room, seized
q Switchboard, and broke out a large
pane OF glass above the girl, who chung
like u squirrel fifty feet above the base
ment, and pulled her out, chattering
and laughing, into the passage, and SO,
with good courage and rare presence
of mind, saved her life.
Only three patients wear the bed
ticking mittens, and this so that they
will not pull out their eyebrows and
finger-nails. Only m is kept in a
crib, and this SO that she may secure
rest to a broken limb.
The screw holes and chair marks are
seen. where the bad patients were
formerly fastened in rows, each with
arms in a jacket and u strong band
about the waist which passed through
holes in the back of the chairs and was
locked. The chairs have been supplied
with rockers, and the patients seem to
enjoy them-always excepting the poor
melancholics, who sit or lie huddled up
in a heap, and seem to enjoy nothing.
DR.. Fletcher says they receive from
fifty to n hundred inquiries from
friends daily, and that the women
usually send stamp and envelope for
answer, while the men use only 3
postal-card. Not infrequently two or
three members of a family are in the
various wards, indicating hereditary in
sanity.
Here is a fine field for study in patho-
ology and psychology, and one which
DR.. Fletcher is improving, though he
says to do any work of q scientific
nature where there are three hundred
attendants and sixteen hundred patients
means the use of spare moments and
midnight oil. However. he has become
very much interested in the study of tho
blood supply of the brain in disease-a
subject almost untouched in the works
on brain and mind diseases, as, for
example, in the great aliases of the
brain by DR.. Dalton. of New York.
recently published.
DR.. Fletcher had a series of injected
specimens of the arteries supplying the
brain dissected out, notably the artery
at the base of the brain, which branches
like Il tree, two of the shoots spreading
around to meet the arteries in front,
forming the remarkable communication
between the front and back sets of
brain arteries, known as the '.circle of
Willis" in memory of its dcscriber. a
contemporary and adherent Of Hunter.
who discovered the circulation of
the blood. Many anomalies the
Doctor finds in the blood supply
of the insane brain-two of the
four great tubes that supply the
brain, in one case reduced to the size
Of a pin; others turned to solid cords,
and yet others with beads and pockets
developed in them. Of these he has
made careful drawings, and has pre-
served specimens, hoping to add some
thing to the multiplicity of causes, in
Guiding disease and distortion OF every
organ and function of the body from
the sole of the foot to the crown of the
head-which go to make up the I'M
known thing which we call insanity,
but which, like headache or heartache,
or WEAKNESS, may spring up from any
part of the body, or from purely
external causes Indianapolis Journal.