The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1899-05-22
THR|YES ON THE MAD
Peculiar Industry of Gheel, Flem-
ish Town.
RESORT FOR THE INSANE
EVERY FIFTH PERSON A LUNA
TIC AND AT LIBERTY.
RESORT FOR THE INSANE
Kindness and Occupation the Only
Remedies Used, and Their Efficacy
Proven By Successfully per
Cent of Patients Cured. and All
Are Improved.
Chicago Inter ocean,

Gheel, Near Antwerp.-Every fifth
person in this lively market town
of 10000 inhabitants is a lunatic, yet a
tolerably observing person may remain
here a week without even suSpecting
the great enterprise carried on-the
wholesale treatment of insane by the
simplest and most natural methods,
guaranteed to be effective by five GEN.
turtles of good results
Gheel men and women are born mad
houSe-keeperS, and the youngsters take
to the task of managing, employing and
amusing maniacS as naturally as to
their native diet of potatoes, bacon and
coffee. In fact, to give up part of ones
house or bedroom accommodations to
crazy strangers is as much of an indus
try here as agriculture, tanning, and
cloth and sabot making. And no Won
der, for the town owes its origin to the
mother protectress of the mentally dis
eased, st. Dympna, who has had a
shrine on the spot where the city stands
since times immemorial.
The -burgomaSter says that long be-
fore the present town was thought of in
the thirteenth century, bishop of Ant
werp recommended pilgrimage to the
saints tomb-then situated in a waste
country-aS a means of securing holy
Dympna's intercesSion for insane rela-
tives and friends at the throne of the
Almighty. The mother protectress
seems TO have worked many miracles
in those days, but, as a general thing,
took her time about them.
The pilgrims, agreeable to the bish-
ops injunction, had to remain with the r
charges in the neighborhood until a
cure was effected, and waited often
months and years, in some cases their
whole lifetime. Thus temporary set
tlement grew up around the shrine, then
a village. The latter has developed
into town whose community achieved
fair success in various industries, yet
withal stuck to the occupation of the
earliest settlers.
Doctors Scarce In Gheel.
The Gheelers are the real medicine
men in this mental health resort today,
as their ancestors were before them.
remain supplemented peasants as of
old. Common sense is their strong
point, and medical science so much out
of their line that there are not more
than two native doctors in the place.
On the other hand. they pride them
selves on two never-failing household
remedies, simplicity and patience
As to each family's Speciality. there
are the SteenS, for instance For the
past two or three centuries they have
made speciality of taking care of
epileptics. the experience gained in the
treatment descending from father to
son. They could give points to many
college professor. The Vrooms are
just as well up in mania of persecution
as the Steens are in the other branch
of suffering. And so it is with the
Van Zakens, hereditary attendants on
delirium tremens. the Brealmonts, the
Bergeres, the Boulangers, Bruits, and
Maasns. who have a reputation for
managing victims of melancholia,
monomania of fear. or suspicion, or
pride, and of emotional madness,
respectively.
But while. all Gheelers nre profess
sional madhouse-keepers, more or less.
none are allowed to engage in this
business exclusively, each family, no
matter how high its reputation in any
special branch may be. receiving only
as many boarders as their house can
hold without being turned into an
asylum Every crazy man, woman or
child living in the shadow of Saint
Dympna's shrine must work with his