I am appalled to learn you have administered apomorphine mixed with hyoscine to two Reaper Wing patients. Please never use this method again–it’s a terrible and inhumane treatment.
I also believe that despite my request, you have discontinued the exercise hour for Reaper Wing because of the apparent attempt by two patients to escape. Even if any of them did escape they would not get very far, and in any case they would be too bewildered by the world to inflict any real harm on anyone. So please restore that hour to them at once. It’s an important part of their day: they look forward to it and it gives them a semblance of normality, which is vital.
Thank you for the recent invitation to afternoon tea, but I regret I shall not have time to accept. I do not, in fact, normally drink afternoon tea.
Sincerely,
Daniel Glass
Latchkill Asylum
Wednesday a.m.
Dear Dr Glass
In re. your letter of yesterday, the apomorphine/hyoscine was administered as an emergency measure. On this occasion, my nurses were being distracted from seeing to the breakfasts. It is my rule that breakfast is at 7.00 sharp, which means the night staff have to begin preparations around half past five–porridge for sixty people does not prepare itself. The hyoscine draught was intended as a calming method and it proved effective, allowing staff to attend to their other duties.
Reaper Wing’s recreation hour has been reinstated as per your instructions, although I am unhappy about it. It seems unnecessarily public to actually allow them into the grounds.
I am afraid your little protegée, Dora Scullion, is not turning out very well. I believe her to be quarter-witted, and doubt her suitability for the work here even in the kitchens.
I am sorry to hear you cannot take afternoon tea with us. Perhaps morning coffee another day might be more convenient. Shall we say Monday of next week?
Cordially,
Freda Prout (Matron)
Bracken Surgery
Wednesday p.m.
Dear Matron
I am not surprised your treatment had a calming effect. If you were forced to swallow a violent emetic and spent the next twenty-four hours vomiting, you would end in being very calm indeed. I don’t care if these patients try to take Latchkill apart brick by brick, or if you and your staff have to stand guard on them from now until the start of the second millennium, apomorphine and hyoscine are never to be given again, not to any patient in your care.
I can’t see that it matters how public Reaper Wing’s recreation hour is. The patients can never be allowed out of Latchkill, of course, and keeping them in their own wing is obviously necessary, but that’s no reason not to give them a little normality.
As for Dora Scullion, please leave her to me. She is most certainly not quarter-witted; it is simply that, to quote the words of another, she dances to music other people cannot hear.
Sorry, but I never have time for morning coffee and will be extremely busy on Monday anyway.
Daniel Glass
Latchkill Asylum
Thursday a.m.
Dear Dr Glass
It is most generous of you to take an interest in Scullion. I hope your musical project, whatever it is, turns out well.
I have always considered the hyoscine mix very beneficial and, as you know, I feel that isolation and restraint is often necessary. Perhaps we may try electro-hydrotherapy instead?
Cordially,
Freda Prout (Matron)
Bracken Surgery
Thursday p.m.
Dear Matron
No!
Water and electricity are a potentially lethal combination, and, in the wrong hands, disastrous. Do you want to take Latchkill back to the days of starvation, fetters and flogging, or try rearranging the brain by means of the spinning stool!
I have recently been studying the use of mesmerism at Bart’s Hospital in London–or, to give it its modern name, hypnotism–and I am coming to believe that it can be very beneficial in understanding the hidden conflicts and buried memories of the mentally ill. I intend to talk to Latchkill’s governing board about the possibility of attempting this procedure on several of the patients.
Daniel Glass