fe was as usual
devoted to restoring this man to health. He was weaned slowly back
from the grave by special nurses and treatment, till it began to dawn
upon him that he might have to stand his trial. He would ask me if I
thought he would have to undergo a long term, for he had not been
conscious of what he was doing. As he grew better, and the policeman
arrived to watch him, he decided that it would probably be quite a
long time. He had a little place of his own somewhere, and he used to
have chickens and other presents sent up to fellow patients, and would
have done so to the nurses, only they could not receive them. I was
not personally present at his trial, but I felt really sorry to hear
that they hanged him.

Many of these poor fellows were only prevented from ending their own
lives by our using extreme care. The case of one wretched man, driven
to desperation, I still remember. "Patient male; age forty-five;
domestic trouble--fired revolver into his mouth. Finding no phenomena
of interest develop, fired a second chamber into his right ear. Still
no symptoms worthy of notice. Patient threw away pistol and walked to
hospital." Both bullets had lodged in the thick parts of his skull,
and doing no damage were left there. A subsequent note read: "Patient
to-day tried to cut his throat with a dinner-knife which he had hidden
in his bed. Patient met with no success." Another of my cases which
interested me considerably was that of a professional burglar who had
been operated upon in almost every part of the kingdom, and was
inclined to be communicative, as the job which had brought him to
hospital had cost him a broken spine. Very little hope was held out to
him that he would ever walk again. He was clear of murder, for he
said it was never his practice to carry firearms, being a nervous man
and apt to use them if he had them and got alarmed when busy
burglaring. He relied chiefly on his extraordinary agility and steady
head to escape. His only yarn, however, was his last. He and a friend
had been detailed by the gang to the job of plundering one of a row of
houses. The plans of the house and of the enterprise were all in
order, but some unexpected alarm was given and he fled upstairs,
climbed through a skylight onto the roof, and ran along the gables of
the tiles, not far ahead of the police, who were armed and firing at
him. He could easily have gotten away, as he could run along the
coping of the brick parapet witho