Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?

Throughout the poem, Whitman makes it a point to mention multiple times, varying forms of sicknesses that might strike a person. This sickness is sometimes in the mind, in the body, or in the heart. A few textual excerpts to get you in the frame of mind:

*The sickness of one of my folks—or of myself . . . . or ill-doing . . . . or loss or lack
of money . . . . or depressions or exaltations,

They come to me days and nights and go from me again,

But they are not the Me myself.

*The flap of the curtained litter—the sick man inside, borne to the hospital,

*I am he bringing help for the sick as they pant on their backs,

*The wretched features of ennuyees, the white features of corpses, the livid faces of
drunkards, the sick-gray faces of onanists,
The gashed bodies on battlefields, the insane in their strong-doored rooms, the
sacred idiots,

*Ranting and frothing in my insane crisis—waiting dead-like till my spirit arouses me;

* The felon steps forth from the prison . . . . the insane becomes sane . . . . the suffer-
ing of sick persons is relieved,

The sweatings and fevers stop . . the throat that was unsound is sound . . the lungs of the consumptive are resumed . . the poor distressed head is free,

The joints of the rheumatic move as smoothly as ever, and smoother than ever,

Stiflings and passages open . . . . the paralysed become supple,

The swelled and convulsed and congested awake to themselves in condition,

They pass the invigoration of the night and the chemistry of the night and awake.

*The lunatic is carried at last to the asylum a confirmed case, He will never sleep any more as he did in the cot in his mother's bedroom;

*The malformed limbs are tied to the anatomist's table, What is removed drops horribly in a pail;
********************************************************************************

There are a bunch floating in the poem. After re-reading the poem several times, I found a prominent theme with the repetition of health, sanity, insanity, and sickness.
That being said, here's some cultural context:

This is the inebriate asylum on Ward's Island, at Manhattan State Hospital. Also called the New York City Asylum. This object/artifact/drawing is from 1869. I found this at the New York Public Library


Now, Ward's Island is in the East River of New York, and is bridged by a rail to Queens called Hell Gate Bridge. A small population lived on the island starting in the early 17th century, and the first (draw)bridge was built to connect the island in 1807, out of wood. But that got destroyed by a storm in 1821. Around 1840, the island primarily became a dumping-ground-wasteland for everything unwanted in New York. This includes, but is not limited to:

• Thousands of bodies from Madison Square and Bryant Park
• A hospital for sick and dying immigrants, opened in 1847, which then became the largest hospital complex in the world during the 1850s.
• An Asylum for the insane, opened in 1863.
• Immigration station
• Manhattan State Hospital, containing 6,045 patients, making it the largest psychiatric hospital in the world.

This is the Verplank State Immigrant Hospital in 1871-72. You can sort of make out the people in the photograph. I found this on a ship's list website. Neat.



I'd imagine that everyone was pretty aware of these asylums during the time period. Especially Whitman.

Cultural object found. I'm done.