holes at both ends, as seen in the engraving. I did not resist, for I knew it would do no good, though I had been terribly beaten. She placed this last jacket upon me, drew all the straps tight, and I had on the whole of the accursed harness.

Immediately after this the female attendant proceeded to open the doors and lead the way down two flight of stairs to the bath room. The male attendant took me by the arm and hurried me along after her; there we were met by a patient by the name of E. Scott. I was there ordered into a bath tub of cold water, compelled to sit down, compelled to lie down, bound as I was hand and foot, and chilled through and through; my feet were pressed hard against the foot of the bath tub and my shoulders against the raised bottom of the tub. The water not being of sufficient depth over the raised part of the bottom to cover my head or keep it under water, the attendant took an old tin wash dish, and dipping the water from between my legs poured the dirty water into my mouth and down my throat, keeping my mouth pried open all the while. I begged for my life; I cried for mercy; they would not desist, but again and again filled the dish and poured it down my throat. I was almost strangled, but not yet content, they both grabbed my legs and raised them from the bottom of the tub, thereby drawing my head and shoulders into the deeper water. Then the attendant, by the aid of Scott, held my head under water until I was almost strangled. Whenever I was almost gone they would raise it a moment for me to revive, and then jam it down again under the water. Oh, fiend! can you tell how one feels in the act of drowning, with no one near to pity. But He, who is everywhere present, beholding the evil and the good, delivered me out of their hands, blessed be his holy name forever and forever. Amen.

It was most unjust; if I was a lunatic it was unjust; if I was not, it was none the less so. Strange, that in a free land, in a thickly settled and civilized community, such barbarous and inhuman acts are allowed by those in authority.

If we can learn, experience and suffer so much in one short hour, what think you I learned, suffered and experienced in ten long years!

MOSES SWAN.

PREFACE.

I have been prompted by my friends and urged by a sense of duty to write the history of the Ten Years I spent in Lunatic Asylums, and give it to the public. This I proposed to do as soon as I came out, but I dreaded to expose my family to the scorn and reproach that would be cast upon them by my telling the whole truth, and when I did conclude to give it to the public, my feeble health prevented me, for a long time, from doing any thing.

I commenced during the last summer to write a full account of all the terrible acts that I experienced, saw and heard during those eventful years of sorrow and affliction, hoping that at some future day I might be able to give it to the public.

N. B.—I have prefixed an original engraving to the title page of this little history, descriptive of an act that took place in one of the back halls of the Marshall Infirmary or Lunatic Asylum, Ida Hill, Troy, N. Y.

This certifies that I was a patient in the above-named institution from March 29, 1860, to October 13, 1870.