She spoke not only with her voice but the voices of others, quoting testimony she’d collected over the past few weeks from the patients—and from McFarland’s staff.
“The patients are so badly treated here, that I could never think of having a friend of mine ever come here for treatment,”12 one reportedly said; Elizabeth included their words in the reproof.
“Dr. McFarland keeps persons here, that are not insane to my certain knowledge,”13 testified another.
“If it were not for losing my place here, I would expose Dr. McFarland to the world,”14 a third confided.
Elizabeth had boldly drawn on her friendships with both staff and patients to write the entire reproof. The result was that she’d created a chorus of condemnation, each voice more damning than the last.
“This is but a specimen of the kind of testimony I have on hand,” she assured him, “in sad abundance, and which, with my own eye and earwitness testimony, would make a ponderous volume. How would you like to see such facts as these in print?”15
Her army of support made her scathing. While some of her friends on the staff were too scared to confront the doctor in case they lost their jobs, he held no such power over her. “Perhaps it was for this very thing I was sent here,” she said to the superintendent, “to let the State see that Dr. McFarland has yet to learn the very alphabet of his profession… You cannot tell a sane from an insane person… You are incapacitated for your office.”16
Through it all, McFarland bore her attack without the slightest sign of annoyance. As though anticipating this cold reaction, she said, “You can…try to ease your troubled conscience by [telling yourself]—these are only the ravings of insanity. But, sir, they are not. They are the words of truth.”17 She added, “I defy all your attempts to make me out an insane person. You cannot do it…and all your attempts to do so, will be only working out your more speedy destruction.”18
But the more Elizabeth threatened him, the more laughable she seemed. What power did she have, a woman committed under his control whose fate he held securely in his hands? When she told him he was destined to see her “rising and applauded as the world’s reformer,”19 it seemed so unlikely an outcome he may even have smirked.
As the doctor sat stolidly before her, Elizabeth became fierce. “You need not sneer at this,” she snapped at him. “I have hundreds on my side, already.”20
And while “hundreds” may have been an exaggeration, she was certainly not alone. Often, she spoke collectively throughout her presentation. And there was an overt early feminism in her words that rang warning bells for the doctor. “Of one thing you may rest assured,” she vowed. “The time for down-trodden and oppressed women to have their rights, has come. Her voice and her pen are going to move the world.”21 She advised him to “fear her artillery.”22
But McFarland wasn’t afraid. He was, however, perturbed. He’d been disturbed by Elizabeth’s defense, when she’d written of the bonds she’d forged with the “class of oppressed women”23 on Seventh Ward, but this rhetoric was worse. It seemed her women’s rights obsession was “communicable to others,”24 and McFarland disapproved in case it “spread, like a moral leprosy, to all with whom…she may become associated.”25 This idea of telling women to stand up for themselves, to reject his moral treatment, would cause sheer chaos if others became as unbendable as she. She had clearly filled “the minds of less intelligent patients…with prejudices.”26 It really was “most trying.”27
Well, he would have to put a stop to it.
Elizabeth seemingly saw none of these workings on McFarland’s face, engrossed as she was in reading her reproof. In fact, despite her firm stance, there were clear hints in the document that his reins were even now about her.
“I do want to respect and love you,” she sighed. “But I cannot, unless you will exhibit some humanity.”28
Yet even these kind words provoked no reaction from the doctor. McFarland showed emotion only once that day. Toward the end of the reproof, Elizabeth made a brief reference to the kiss he’d given her, which had first inspired her to confront him. Though it had been the reason she’d first put pen to paper, after she’d gathered the testimony from the others, she’d decided to reduce her own experience to a single line in what would later become eighteen typeset pages. She wanted to champion their cause, not hers. So in just twenty-five words, Elizabeth fleetingly focused on the kiss he’d given her. She told him there had been an eyewitness “when you thought we were alone.”29