Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1906-12-12

he manages to borrow $10-this man
with an income of $4,000 a year.
One day he does not return from his
daily walk. No, he has walked well
and far-he has taken train to New
York from an obscure railway station
miles distant from White Plains,
where Bloomingdale now is. By night
fall he is safe in Philadelphia.
And now what does he do?
Does he go into paroXysms OF impo-
tent rage at those who incarccrated
him, as do many of the insane when
they escape? Does he try to kill
those whom he might imagine respon-
sible for his sufferings? Does he
break out in incoherent rawlings
against fancied evils?
Under Scientific Observation.
No. He goes straightaway to a san
itarium in Philadelphia. He states
his case calmly to the physician in
charge and asks to be put under
scientific observation. After six
months voluntary confinement there
the physicians there tell him that he
is perfectly sane and has always been
so. He is not even now content. He
goes to another institution and goes
through the same voluntary process
all over again. Once more the physi-
clans tell Mr. Chanler he is well bal
anced. Then suddenly he appears at
his old home, Merry Mills, Gotham,
Va, where he has stayed to this day,
master of his ancestral estates.
Once safely home, this so-called
lunatic retained counsel. The matter
of his sanity was brought up in the
Virginia courts and then and there
John Armstrong Chanler was pro-
nounced sane and competent. But
the greater part of his fortune was
here in New York state, and here it
is on record that John Armstrong
Chanler is a hopeless lunatic. Should
he come here he would be deprived of
his liberty. And that is why he is
suing in the United States court in
the hope of winning back his inheri-
lance and his standing as a man of
sound mind.
And why was John Armstrong
Chanler Columbia 'S3, called insane
Because, as the physicians said, he
had delusions-at least some of them
said so.
They called him a hypochrondiac-
person who thinks he is always i'll
AS matter of fact he did have spina
trouble and govt. He took to vege
tarianism to get rid of his equity con
dition. He got well. Today he eat:
nothing but dry bread, we'll sprinkleC
with salt, with an occasional piece O
cheese, and sometimes ice cream o.
candy. This is given as a symptom
that he is insane.
Those who committed him to liv
ing grave declared that he had Shakes
peare's power and could make himsel
Napoleon by going into trance. Tha
he was possessed of the power O
graphic automatism" and had deve
oped his X-faculty-type of subcor
sciousness-was taken as another ev
dence of insanity.
Yet some of the most prominen
| psychological writer's discuss this
| faculty in all seriousness and admi
| that there is such a thing as graph
| automatism." And all of this is toll
! in remarkable book which Mr.. Char
| Ter has just published.
| He calls it -Four Years Behind tn
| Bars of Bloomingdale; or, The Banl
| ruptcy Law in New York In it he
| extremely bitter toward his two brotl
1 ers, William Astor Chanler and Levi
Stuyvesant Chanler He calls Bloom
ingdale The Bastile of the 400" an
asserts very positively that it is a
l. easy matter to put anyone behind tn
IS bars forever as insane, just as Read
contended in his Very Hard Cash