These amazing writings are by a gentleman committed to the Cambridgeshire Asylum (now Fulbourn Hospital) located near Cambridge, England. He spent three years at the asylum for being in a melancholy mood.

The writings are included among other such writings by asylum patients compiled by G. Mackenzie Bacon, medical superintendent in his book.

These diagrammatic writings are on the two sides of the same paper ensuring he utilized every mm. of the page. There is no clear evidence if these writings were decrypted to make some sense of what he was trying to convey if at all.

It is a fascinating insight into the mind of perhaps a gifted but unrecognized talent, or just plain rambling horseshit, we may never know for sure.

Especially since the gentleman took his own life by drowning at a public spot. Does that say more about the society than him?

Bacon did come upon a letter this gentleman wrote to a medical man who tried to dissuade this type of writing. The excerpt of the letter is given below:

Dear Doctor, To write or not to write, that is the question. Whether tis nobler in the mind to follow the visit of the great ‘Fulbourn’ with ‘chronic melancholy’ expressions of regret (withheld when he was here) that, as the Fates would have it, we were so little prepared to receive him, and to evince my humble desire to do honour to his visit. My Fulbourn star, but an instant seen, like a meteor’s flash, a blank when gone. The dust of ages covering my little sanctum parlour room, the available drapery to greet the Doctor, stowed away through the midst of the regenerating (water and scrubbing – cleanliness next to godliness, political and spiritual) cleansing of a little world. The Great Physician walked, bedimmed by the ‘dark ages’ the long passage of Western Enterprise, leading to the curvatures of rising Eastern morn. The rounded configuration of Lunar (tics) garden’s lives an o’ershadowment on Britannia’s vortex…

Aah! Bless Creative Imagination!

For more such writings and analysis by Bacon you can read a free online copy here: On the Writing of the Insane (1870)

Source: The Public Domain Review