Dr. Pliny Earle

A physician who specialized in the treatment of the insane, Earle (1809-1892) pioneered a more humane approach to treating those with psychiatric disorders, which he employed during the five years he served at Bloomingdale asylum.

Just as his ghost does in The Twilight Prisoner, Earle encouraged his patients to participate in lectures and other entertainment as part of his “moral treatment.” The lecture that Cora, Jack, and Euri burst in on as they are being chased by Cerberus—“Physical, Intellectual and Moral Beauty”—was in fact one of the real lectures Earle prescribed for his patients.

In addition to philosophy, history, poetry and music, Earle also highly approved of dancing. In his written history of the years he spent at Bloomingdale, he writes:

On one evening, in each month during the cold season, there is a cotillion party, or ball, attended by from sixty or seventy of the patients. No means of entertainment gives more general satisfaction than this; and, on the class of patients admitted here, its general influence is evidently beneficial.

I have taken some liberties, however, in suggesting that Earle’s moral treatment might also include the limbo.