The Father of American Psychiatry

[vagabond]

Madness nestles in vessels of blood
and you don’t fault a fellow for a fever
or blame a wagon for its broken wheel.
 
Drinking, dicing, his first-born disappoints him,
reading oppressive melancholia
on the Moral and Physical Thermometer.
 
Sanity breeds in regular habits -
bleeding, purging, mercury, emetics;  
the aptitude to judge like other men.         great line (I didn´t know it´s a quote until i read the comments still it´s surely enhanced as a part of your poem) 
 
Escorted home, cobwebbed, uncombed,
no tongue or eye for kith and kin;
as familiar as The King of Babylon.
 
Heresy, buggery, blasphemy and theft
are bodily diseases oozing out
of each incautious orifice.              lights up imagination.. sane people keep their asses tight so no heresy shall ooze out
 
Father, doctor, shrink and gaoler
confined him in his own asylum
to wear deep gutters in the basement stone.
 
A hospital bed is not a prison cell.
The Gyrator and the Tranquiliser             isn´t it spelled "Tranquilizer"?
are kinder than the stake or the noose.
 
He came home once and returned much worsened;
father’s footsteps too long, too certain.
Madness nestles in vessels of blood.
 

enjoyed reading that one from the first moment, even when I knew not about the special reference . it´s great.
it only bothers me that I don´t understand every line of it.