The Case of Charles Dexter Ward
From
a
private
hospital
for
the
insane
near
Providence
,
Rhode
Island
,
there
recently
disappeared
an
exceedingly
singular
person
.
He
bore
the
name
of
Charles
Dexter
Ward
,
and
was
placed
under
restraint
most
reluctantly
by
the
grieving
father
who
had
watched
his
aberration
grow
from
a
mere
eccentricity
to
a
dark
mania
involving
both
a
possibility
of
murderous
tendencies
and
a
profound
and
peculiar
change
in
the
apparent
contents
of
his
mind
.
Doctors
confess
themselves
quite
baffled
by
his
case
,
since
it
presented
oddities
of
a
general
physiological
as
well
as
psychological
character
.
In
the
first
place
,
the
patient
seemed
oddly
older
than
his
twenty-six
years
would
warrant
.
Mental
disturbance
,
it
is
true
,
will
age
one
rapidly
;
but
the
face
of
this
young
man
had
taken
on
a
subtle
cast
which
only
the
very
aged
normally
acquire
.
In
the
second
place
,
his
organic
processes
showed
a
certain
queerness
of
proportion
which
nothing
in
medical
experience
can
parallel
.
Respiration
and
heart
action
had
a
baffling
lack
of
symmetry
;
the
voice
was
lost
,
so
that
no
sounds
above
a
whisper
were
possible
;
digestion
was
incredibly
prolonged
and
minimized
,
and
neural
reactions
to
standard
stimuli
bore
no
relation
at
all
to
anything
heretofore
recorded
,
either
normal
or
pathological
.
The
skin
had
a
morbid
chill
and
dryness
,
and
the
cellular
structure
of
the
tissue
seemed
exaggeratedly
coarse
and
loosely
knit
.
Even
a
large
olive
birthmark
on
the
right
hip
had
disappeared
,
whilst
there
had
formed
on
the
chest
a
very
peculiar
mole
or
blackish
spot
of
which
no
trace
existed
before
.
In
general
,
all
physicians
agree
that
in
Ward
the
processes
of
metabolism
had
become
retarded
to
a
degree
beyond
precedent
.
Psychologically
,
too
,
Charles
Ward
was
unique
.
His
madness
held
no
affinity
to
any
sort
recorded
in
even
the
latest
and
most
exhaustive
of
treatises
,
and
was
conjoined
to
a
mental
force
which
would
have
made
him
a
genius
or
a
leader
had
it
not
been
twisted
into
strange
and
grotesque
forms
.
Dr.
Willett
,
who
was
Ward
's
family
physician
,
affirms
that
the
patient
's
gross
mental
capacity
,
as
gauged
by
his
response
to
matters
outside
the
sphere
of
his
insanity
,
had
actually
increased
since
the
seizure
.
Ward
,
it
is
true
,
was
always
a
scholar
and
an
antiquarian
;
but
even
his
most
brilliant
early
work
did
not
show
the
prodigious
grasp
and
insight
displayed
during
his
last
examinations
by
the
alienists
.
It
was
,
indeed
,
a
difficult
matter
to
obtain
a
legal
commitment
to
the
hospital
,
so
powerful
and
lucid
did
the
youth
's
mind
seem
;
and
only
on
the
evidence
of
others
,
and
on
the
strength
of
many
abnormal
gaps
in
his
stock
of
information
as
distinguished
from
his
intelligence
,
was
he
finally
placed
in
confinement
.
To
the
very
moment
of
his
vanishment
he
was
an
omnivorous
reader
and
as
great
a
conversationalist
as
his
poor
voice
permitted
;
and
shrewd
observers
,
failing
to
foresee
his
escape
,
freely
predicted
that
he
would
not
be
long
in
gaining
his
discharge
from
custody
.
Only
Dr.
Willett
,
who
brought
Charles
Ward
into
the
world
and
had
watched
his
growth
of
body
and
mind
ever
since
,
seemed
frightened
at
the
thought
of
his
future
freedom
.
He
had
had
a
terrible
experience
and
had
made
a
terrible
discovery
which
he
dared
not
reveal
to
his
skeptical
colleagues
.
Willett
,
indeed
,
presents
a
minor
mystery
all
his
own
in
his
connection
with
the
case
.
He
was
the
last
to
see
the
patient
before
his
flight
,
and
emerged
from
that
final
conversation
in
a
state
of
mixed
horror
and
relief
which
several
recalled
when
Ward
's
escape
became
known
three
hours
later
.
That
escape
itself
is
one
of
the
unsolved
wonders
of
Dr.
Waite
's
hospital
.
A
window
open
above
a
sheer
drop
of
sixty
feet
could
hardly
explain
it
,
yet
after
that
talk
with
Willett
the
youth
was
undeniably
gone
.
Willett
himself
has
no
public
explanations
to
offer
,
though
he
seems
strangely
easier
in
mind
than
before
the
escape
.
Many
,
indeed
,
feel
that
he
would
like
to
say
more
if
he
thought
any
considerable
number
would
believe
him
.
He
had
found
Ward
in
his
room
,
but
shortly
after
his
departure
the
attendants
knocked
in
vain
.
When
they
opened
the
door
the
patient
was
not
there
,
and
all
they
found
was
the
open
window
with
a
chill
April
breeze
blowing
in
a
cloud
of
fine
bluish-grey
dust
that
almost
choked
them
.
True
,
the
dogs
howled
some
time
before
;
but
that
was
while
Willett
was
still
present
,
and
they
had
caught
nothing
and
shown
no
disturbance
later
on
.
Ward
's
father
was
told
at
once
over
the
telephone
,
but
he
seemed
more
saddened
than
surprised
.
By
the
time
Dr.
Waite
called
in
person
,
Dr.
Willett
had
been
talking
with
him
,
and
both
disavowed
any
knowledge
or
complicity
in
the
escape
.
Only
from
certain
closely
confidential
friends
of
Willett
and
the
senior
Ward
have
any
clues
been
gained
,
and
even
these
are
too
wildly
fantastic
for
general
credence
.
The
one
fact
which
remains
is
that
up
to
the
present
time
no
trace
of
the
missing
madman
has
been
unearthed
.
Charles
Ward
was
an
antiquarian
from
infancy
,
no
doubt
gaining
his
taste
from
the
venerable
town
around
him
,
and
from
the
relics
of
the
past
which
filled
every
corner
of
his
parents
'
old
mansion
in
Prospect
Street
on
the
crest
of
the
hill
.
With
the
years
his
devotion
to
ancient
things
increased
;
so
that
history
,
genealogy
,
and
the
study
of
colonial
architecture
,
furniture
,
and
craftsmanship
at
length
crowded
everything
else
from
his
sphere
of
interests
.
These
tastes
are
important
to
remember
in
considering
his
madness
;
for
although
they
do
not
form
its
absolute
nucleus
,
they
play
a
prominent
part
in
its
superficial
form
.
The
gaps
of
information
which
the
alienists
noticed
were
all
related
to
modern
matters
,
and
were
invariably
offset
by
a
correspondingly
excessive
though
outwardly
concealed
knowledge
of
bygone
matters
as
brought
out
by
adroit
questioning
;
so
that
one
would
have
fancied
the
patient
literally
transferred
to
a
former
age
through
some
obscure
sort
of
auto-hypnosis
.
The
odd
thing
was
that
Ward
seemed
no
longer
interested
in
the
antiquities
he
knew
so
well
.
He
had
,
it
appears
,
lost
his
regard
for
them
through
sheer
familiarity
;
and
all
his
final
efforts
were
obviously
bent
toward
mastering
those
common
facts
of
the
modern
world
which
had
been
so
totally
and
unmistakably
expunged
from
his
brain
.
That
this
wholesale
deletion
had
occurred
,
he
did
his
best
to
hide
;
but
it
was
clear
to
all
who
watched
him
that
his
whole
program
of
reading
and
conversation
was
determined
by
a
frantic
wish
to
imbibe
such
knowledge
of
his
own
life
and
of
the
ordinary
practical
and
cultural
background
of
the
twentieth
century
as
ought
to
have
been
his
by
virtue
of
his
birth
in
1902
and
his
education
in
the
schools
of
our
own
time
.
Alienists
are
now
wondering
how
,
in
view
of
his
vitally
impaired
range
of
data
,
the
escaped
patient
manages
to
cope
with
the
complicated
world
of
today
;
the
dominant
opinion
being
that
he
is
"
lying
low
"
in
some
humble
and
unexacting
position
till
his
stock
of
modern
information
can
be
brought
up
to
the
normal
.
The
beginning
of
Ward
's
madness
is
a
matter
of
dispute
among
alienists
.
Dr.
Lyman
,
the
eminent
Boston
authority
,
places
it
in
1919
or
1920
,
during
the
boy
's
last
year
at
the
Moses
Brown
School
,
when
he
suddenly
turned
from
the
study
of
the
past
to
the
study
of
the
occult
,
and
refused
to
qualify
for
college
on
the
ground
that
he
had
individual
researches
of
much
greater
importance
to
make
.
