Hospital for Disabled Labourers with the Brain — N. P. Willis, 1846

Hospital for Disabled Labourers with the Brain — N. P. Willis, 1846 Willis’s complete article proposing a refuge for ill writers and discussing Poe’s circumstances. The supplied lead calls it Hint to Brother Editors; this record uses the title of the identified historical printing. Descriptions of Poe’s health and conduct are contemporary claims, not a modern diagnosis. Locally preserved electronic transcription of the cited historical printing. This is not a newspaper-page facsimile. Typography is simplified, and the text has not been independently proofread word by word. HOSPITAL FOR DISABLED LABOURERS WITH THE BRAIN. IF pity, felt more for a stab than for a bruise — more for an operation on the brain than for one on the arm — more for a man broken on the wheel than for one in prison — if this pity, greater in proportion as the suffering is keener, were answered to by correspondent Institutions for its relief, there would have been, long ago, in this or any other city, a Retreat for disabled labourers with the brain. We have long wished for the handle of this subject to come round. Obvious as its merit is, even with the simple statement we have just made — ready as any one will be to acknowledge, that the poverty of the diseasedly sensitive author must be ten-fold harder to bear as well as ten-fold more hopeless of self-relief, than the mere flesh and blood pauper's — the subject is difficult of mention, the relief difficult of application, and the lesser sufferer is consequently provided for, while the greater is set aside and forgotten. Twenty-six thousand visits of sympathy are mentioned in a late Report as having been made “to the poor” of this city, by one society; and what one of these visits was in search of sufferers whose first apprehension, even, of want, is a mental agony not many removes from madness? The feeling we have long entertained on this subject, has been freshened by a recent paragraph in the Express announcing that Mr. EDGAR A. POE, and his wife, were both dangerously ill and suffering for want of the common necessaries of life. Here is one of the finest scholars, one of the most original men of genius, and one of the most industrious of the literary profession of our country, whose temporary suspension of labour, from bodily illness, drops him immediately to a level with the common objects of public charity. There was no intermediate stopping-place — no respectful shelter where, with the delicacy due to genius and culture, he might secure aid, unadvertised, till, with returning health, he could resume his labours and his unmortified sense of independence. He must either apply to individual friends — (a resource to which death is sometimes almost preferable) — or suffer down to the level where Charity receives claimants, but where Rags and Humiliation are the only recognised Ushers to her presence. Is this right? Should there not be, in all highly civilized communities, an Institution designed expressly for educated and refined objects of charity, — a hospital, a retreat, a home of seclusion and comfort, the sufficient claims to which would be such susceptibilities as are violated by the above mentioned appeal in a daily newspaper. Mr. Poe lives out of the city, and we cannot ascertain before this goes to press, how far this report of his extreme necessity is true. We received yesterday a letter from an anonymous hand, mentioning the paragraph in question, expressing high admiration for Mr. Poe's genius, and enclosing a sum of money, with a request that we would forward it to him. We think it very possible that this, and other aid, may be timely and welcome, though we know, that, on Mr. Poe's recovery from former illnesses, he has been deeply mortified and distressed by the discovery that his friends had been called upon for assistance. The highly cultivated women who share his lot, his wife and mother, are, we also know, the prey of constant anxiety for him; and though he vigorously resumes the la