The Father of American Psychiatry

[ray]

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.
 
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.
 
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
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.
 

[cidermaid]

Hi ray, this was an interesting read but I am afraid that untill I had gone off and done my homework from a search on the title I was a little lost with reguard to what the poem was actually trying to convey.
Having done a little background reading I then thought that this was a solid read, but i question if this in fact means that it is also not so acessable to the average reader.   Perhaps i should have offered my crit before i looked up the title as these might have actually been more informative for you...but here I am now.
I won't make the comment about the size of the text beyond to assume that this was not what you intended and lots of people seem to be having the same problem...self included.

Madness nestles in vessels of blood   I like the opening line, initially I did question the use of nestles as this gave me a cozied up,warm / fluffy type image and i was not convinced from the rest of the read if this was deliberate or intended.
and you don’t fault a fellow for a fever
or blame a wagon for its broken wheel. the tone and the word use in these last two lines are spot on to place the reader into the age / setting of the voice.   However, I do struggle to work out at various points in the read if these un-italiced lines are the voice of "Father" or the voice of the reporter.  (I get two different voices in my read and I'm thinking the italics is the observational voice but at times it seems a bit blured).
 
Drinking, dicing, his first-born disappoints him,   I did not get the dicing on the initial reads and even after my homework I'm still a bit lost.  At first i thought it was a referance to gambling habits but now i'm not so sure what it refers to.  Either way it does not add anything to my read and i think it could be cut.
reading oppressive melancholia
on the Moral and Physical Thermometer.   I am wondering if that should be the or his in this line.  Overall this stanza is nicely done.
 
Sanity breeds in regular habits -
bleeding, purging, mercury, emetics;  Like the use of emetics in this contex, reinforces the medical overlay and science.
the aptitude to judge like other men. this line falls a bit flat in meaning after the set up from the proceeding lines.  I felt the change from phisician to moralist weakened the image.
 
Escorted home, cobwebbed, uncombed,
no tongue or eye for kith and kin;
as familiar as The King of Babylon.  This whole stanza goes over my head, I get the feeling that my research was not deep enough to uncover this gem... so for my read this is not working.   (Initially thought it might be in referance to his son but then the stanza below is clearly about this, so felt this is just making me work too hard and the rewards were not inticing enough)
 
Heresy, buggery, blasphemy and theft   like the historical tones to this line and the "B" words.  felt that given the rich vein of info on this man some referance to his thoughts on skin colour or alcoholism might have had more weight than referancing theft, but before i looked this up I was okay with this.
are bodily diseases oozing out   great image and historically in keeping with the topic on the table.
of each incautious orifice.  Overall like this stanza gives a good insight into the mind and outworking of this life.
 
Father, doctor, shrink and gaoler   Like the starkness of this statement and again with the period word goaler.
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
are kinder than the stake or the noose.   whilst i liked this stanza on my original reads this again was where I was lost until I had done my homework.  it carries plenty of simple enough images and is straightforward in the presentation of these, but the use of the specific term gyrator threw me.

 

He came home once and returned much worsened;   this line feels overly long, think you could loose the and.  Also don't like the use of worsened, not in keeping with the rest of the poem / period word useage.   (next I'll be readed it was his bestest pair of pants!)
father’s footsteps too long, too certain.
Madness nestles in vessels of blood.   Undecided if I like the use of repeating this line.  I get the reinforcment of the thought as a concluding comment but not sure if it works as a full repeat or if you could drop the use of nestles here.

 

I liked this poem, even before I looked up the referance, it was intriging to read and peice together a story / picture.  Post referance i think you have done a great job of laying out a biography of this life...it makes for an intereting read and is a good subject choice.
all the best AJ.

[ray]

Thanks, cidermaid. Personally, I'm inclined to agree with you regarding the poem's accessibility. It is difficult without some prior knowledge of the subject. And yet, on another site the poem was highly praised and I've also recently been reminded that we should not dumb down our work to cater for lazy readers. I'm quoting, I'm not sure which side of that fence I'm on.
Anyhow, to details. Basically, the non-italicized verses are meant to summarise Benjamin Rush's philosophy and those italicized a very compressed biography of his eldest son.
Dicing refers to gambling.
Sanity is ....the aptitude to judge like other men -  a direct quote from Rush. He's a fascinating character for me. You mentioned his attitude to skin colour and I've another, better, poem on that subject. In short, he believed the skin pigmentation of the negro was a result of leprosy. Thus, though he disapproved of slavery he believed the negro required not emancipation and equality, but treatment and segregation. He's a prime example of how psychiatry consistently fails those whose cause they should be championing. He cannot countenance that the prevailing structure is corrupted, that would be evidence of insanity. The fault must be located in the victim.
worsened - yeah, I think you're right.

[billy]

easy enough to google who it's about. some good sounds via assonance etc. the tercets are in the main well put together. if your aim is for it to be a cold piece you succeeded, that said, i think it lacks a bit of depth. we know father is the patient but the poem doesn't feel as though it's about him given the title, and on reading the dad tercets i think it would be better suited if there was something on a more personal level, possibly via a couple more tercets. halfway down the poem i had some conflict, is the psychiatrist the same person as the father within the poem.t the format does read as two poems which i'm assuming are supposed to be connect; they are but for me not enough. it takes a few reads to get into it and that's not a bad thing,

Madness nestles in vessels of blood 
and you don’t fault a fellow for a fever  and isn't needed as it put both clauses in the 1st and 2nd line as one
or blame a wagon for its broken wheel.
 
Drinking, dicing, his first-born disappoints him,  is dicing gambling?
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.
 
Escorted home, cobwebbed, uncombed, i really like this tercet for the imagery it reeks of [i]altshimer, or metal disorder.
[/i]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.
 
Father, doctor, shrink and gaoler
confined him in his own asylum
to wear deep gutters in the basement stone. okay, this stanza shows the poem isn't about the father, but the doctor,
 
A hospital bed is not a prison cell.
The Gyrator and the Tranquiliser
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.
 

[ray]

Thanks, billy. Benjamin Rush was, as far as his eldest son was concerned, father, doctor, shrink and gaoler - actually, shrink is a word out of its time and I'll have to change that.
Dicing was a form of gambling in Rush's time and well into the 20th century.

[Erthona]

Ray-o-Hope,

"bleeding, purging, mercury, emetics" sets the time frame nicely.

"The King of Babylon" Which one did you mean? Nebuchadnezzar II, Lucifer, et al. ?

How does theft ooze out of an orifice?

As this is about "the father of American psychiatry" I am at a loss as to why you would use a primarily British usage of the term "jail" by using "gaoler", as it seems oddly out of place and distracting. Personally it is a word I like, but it was disruptive to the reading for me. I guess as it is still early in the formation of the USA, they might have still been using it, but...

"to wear deep gutters in the basement stone." Is he not wearing deep "ruts" instead of "gutters", unless this is suppose to be some kind of metaphor, and if so it entirely bypasses me.

I am assuming when you use "Gyrator" you are just renaming "centrifugal spinning board"? BTW "gyrate" was not in general usage until 1822, which would have been several years before Rush would have died...just saying. Possible anachronism?

When I first read this I thought you were being sarcastic, or at least ironic, which seemed less than kind, and by no means accurate considering the man was one of the most humane persons working in the field at the time and was solely responsible for making the lives of the "inmates" better than they had been. Certainly from our viewpoint it seems barbarity, but at the time it was the cutting edge. His ideas on Alcoholism were far ahead of his time, as well as accurate. His ideas on blood flow is not dissimilar to Chinese medicine as well as chiropractic profession.

All in all it is a nice look at Rush, but a bit obscure and inaccessible to most readers I would assume.

Oh yes, I appreciate that you are no longer using the courier font, however the size you are now using is a bit taxing for old people with tired eyes.


Dale

[ray]

Thanks, Erthona. I'll try and answer your queries.
The King of Babylon line is a direct quote from Rush describing his son's appearance when he returned home after experiencing some sort of breakdown.

Theft doesn't ooze out of orifices, no more than does heresy, buggery and blasphemy. I was attempting to show how Rush viewed what are moral issues as the products of diseased minds and bodies. It would be more consistent if Theft were omitted and I think I'll do that.

I was under the impression that gaoler was an American usage! But I'm wrong! I'll change it.

The "deep gutters" again comes from Rush himself.

The Gyrator and The Tranquiliser were both contraptions that Rush "invented" himself. They were based on devices formerly used in the persecution of witches.

His works seem barbarous now and for some they did so at the time.
Thomas Jefferson - "In his theory of bleeding and mercury, I was ever opposed to my friend Rush, whom I greatly loved; but who had done much harm, in the sincerest persuasion that he was preserving life and happiness to all around him."

William B. Bean - Professor of Medicine, University of Iowa " The heroic aspects of Benjamin Rush have made us forget the harm he did. His willingness to follow the guttering candle of ignorance, his dogmatic convictions that he was right, his consummate ability to fool himself consistently helped to kill an unmeasured plenty of his patients in Philadelphia."

I agree on the inaccessibility, I suppose, but I find him a fascinating figure, something of a template for the psychiatric profession.

The fonts! I am one of those old people with tired eyes. I cannot work out what happens with these fonts, it's driving me crazy. I'm off for a spin in The Gyrator.

[Erthona]

Ray,

I consider myself fairly well read, plus I was a counselor for 20+ years, and I only have a passing knowledge of Rush. A lot of these things while fascinating would only be accessible to someone who has read a biography about him. I would suggest if you're are going to refer to events and items, the knowledge of which could only come by the means of biography, then you footnote these as the general reader will have no chance to understand. T.S. Elliot did this all the time. As far as the fonts, if you originally type this in a program like MS Word, if you use a 12 pt New Times font, it will be the same as the default font on this site. I know this as that is what I use, although I suspect that any general 12 pt. font type will be rendered the same.

I find the quote of Thomas Jefferson interesting, in that he loved him greatly, despite the fact that he knew the harm Rush was doing. I find that more compelling than the quote from William B. Bean which is obviously several years down the road. I think it should be noted that Lincoln was taking a tonic made with mercury for depression up until the time of his death, and dentistry has used the stuff until just recently. I'm quite sure a hundred years from now (if humans still exits) they will look back on this time period where people had no implants that automatically fixed any damage they sustained, and wonder how we could exists in such a brutal world, whereas if you took a person from 100/150 years ago and showed them a ct scan or an mir, they would think it was witchcraft.

Dale

[ray]

Thanks, Dale. My knowledge doesn't come from a biography, but a chapter or two in a book by Thomas Szasz, who had a bone or two to pick with Rush. Szasz has a bone to pick with most people. I guess the poem's success or otherwise depends on whether it draws the reader to see the general in the specific. Possibly it can but I wouldn't want to take short odds.
Thanks for the advice on the fonts. I'll try that.
I'd imagined, from what I read, that Bean was a contemporary of Rush's, but I see he's not such an old bean as I thought.

[tectak]

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.
 
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.
 
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
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.
 

Hi ray,
once again, I apologise that I can no longer do a line by line...perhaps to the good...as technology has defeated me. Let me say at once, though, that this is a very brave effort. Rush was a prism of many sides and to try to extend a piece to refocus the light he shed is without doubt a challenge. In my humble opinion you have done well to choose facets which are visibly angled towards but a few focal points. Any more detail would obfuscate and not clarify...which Dale would insist is the very essence of good poetry. I for one found the piece strangely illuminating...to further stretch the metaphor BUT, and it pains me to say this, I find myself ingratiatingly sucking Dale's teat. There is a need to bring the character of Rush to the fore...clearly and succinctly, because you are writing a veracity verse which though suitable for opinion is more than less a solid and real personna.
I would like to have seen more of YOUR opinion and, being contrary, perhaps less of historical views through the backward telescope. Rush was, is and will remain controversial in many areas of his doctrinaire belief...I would like to see the heated blood of righteousness flow from your pen. It is what you both deserve.
Having made my thoughts clear...I hope... I can only envy your boldness.
Well done.
Best,
tectak
(Areas of semantic concern I leave to others. The word use seems competent for the complex ideas expressed...that is to say, open to interpretation and dare I say it, poetic licence)

[ray]

Thanks for the kind words, tectak. I'm not sure how brave poets can be considered in our part of the world. Nobody's going to shoot us or even stick us in the tranquiliser. Most of us strap ourselves in readily enough.
Anyhow, I wanted to be even-handed with Rush, or at least condemn him with his own words. I don't feel that more righteousness on my part is called for. I've heard plenty enough of my own voice railing against the sins of Psychiatry, and to tell the truth it feels a little unfair, underhand, in beating a man with the stick of his son's misery. But it is an illuminating tale.

[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.