Mary Huestis Pengilly

Diary Written in the Provincial Lunatic Asylum Mary Huestis Pengilly

Diary Written in the Provincial Lunatic Asylum

by Mary Huestis Pengilly

Diary from a Lunatic Asylum

December.--They will not allow me to go home, and I must write these things down for fear I forget. It will help to pass the time away. It is very hard to endure this prison life, and know that my sons think me insane when I am not.

How unkind Mrs. Mills is today; does she think this sort of treatment is for the good of our health? I begged for milk today, and she can't spare me any; she has not enough for all the old women, she says. I don't wish to deprive any one of that which they require, but have I not a right to all I require to feed me and make me well? All I do need is good nourishing food, and I know better than any one else can what I require to build me up and make me as I was before I met with this strange change of condition. I remember telling the Doctor, on his first visit to my room, that I only needed biscuit and milk and beef tea to make me well. He rose to his feet and said, "I know better than any other man." That was all I heard him say, and he walked out, leaving me without a word of sympathy, or a promise that I should have anything. I say to myself (as I always talk aloud to myself when not well), "You don't know any more than this old woman does." I take tea with Mrs. Mills; I don't like to look at those patients who look so wretched.