The Newtown bee., 1897-10-08
The Home Circle.
A STRANGE TALE OF GHEEL.
THE ASYLUM TOWN OF BELGIUM.

THE ASYLUM TOWN OF BELGIUM.
Gheel, a town of Belgium, is one of the
ancient miracle places of the Catholic
Church in Europe. 1t has shrine at
which, for centuries, insane people have
been reputed to have been cured. What
ever may be the facts or the superstitions
In such cases, modern science has wrought
what one might claim to be miracles
there in the treatment Of nervous dis.
eases for when Belgium, always alert in
social reforms, wished to make an ex-
pertinent of caring for her insane poor by
giving them the freedom Of the open air
and the fields, she chose Gheel as the
place where the trial of the new method
should be made. Here her department
of charitable Institutions has reversed
most of the methods of the past in the
care of nervous patients by placing such
invalids in small boarding houses in the
wide, open, sea-cooled country, and Civ
ing them their freedom under sympathet-
ic supervision. The experiment of the
Belgian government, at first held to be
perllous, has proved as successful as its
purpose was benehcent; 1t is one of the
merciful miracles of modern science,
whose influence seems destined to fill the
world. The streets of Gheel, worn for a
thousand years by the footsteps of un-
happy pilgrims, are now visited by the
philanthropic investigators of all lands,
who study the most merciful ways Of
treating the most pitiable of human az
flIctions. The town now Is a state hos
pital, some 80 miles in circumference,
where the patients are treated In cottage
boarding and where wonderful
cures are reported to have been wrought.
1.-THE strange thing about Gheel is," he
continued, "that most of the patients
become harmless there. AS the opeu-air
hospital Ia now conducted, 1t Ia one of the
most successful experiments in mental
healing that have ever been made"
became intensely interested. How,
my friend, do you account for this re-
sult2'' asked.
SPY hypnotism, in part. Gheel makes
for the patients new imagination. The
insane folk believe that they will be harm.
less. 1t is q new Imagination that helps
to heal In mental disease. The atmos.
phere of the place Ia quiet, and is haunted
with legends Of wonderful recovery. y
am q little derangsd,' said a prince
who was being treated there,
but the quiet here helps
me- The quiet that helps one there il
not only that of the air, fields, gardens,
and linden-trees, but of the hope in all
faces. The afflicted people are sent there
to recover, and many Of them do either
recover or come to have more hopeful
imagination. Gheel Is q commune a
kindergarten for those who have become
children again. Il leads the imagination
into free air and fields"
A commune, IA kindergarten" /
recalled the old New England traditions
OF tying those whose Wills were weak, and
nerves unbalanced and Inexpensive, to
bedposts and staples; of such as ratified
their chains on the approach of friends,
and whose cries and means made wake
full nights In lonely houses, until merciful
death brought the healing Of silence; Of
suicides, who,on account of their disease,
were buried In lots apart from the COM
mon villages of the dead, and upon
whose graves in old England, IL not In
New, the ignorant cast stones with looks
of terror. II am going to be mad" said