Let us not consider what those Egyptians

were early for, or whether the occasion

has even yet taken place. We may assume

that their insane were grateful to be late

for trepanation - the Stone Age treatment

of choice; a hole drilled in the skull allowing

demons to escape  - long abandoned in favour

of Abracadabra and amulets, deciphered

dreams, seductively somnolent trips down

the Nile, hallucinogenic healing rituals

in the white-walled temples of Memphis;

music, painting, dancing, walking

like an Egyptian; in short, the soft therapies.

 

Still, the mentally ill were unsatisfied,

the elopements unabated, death-seeking

flights across yawning and clinging deserts,

sacrificial steps into reptilian jaws,

or the puncture of a rapid venom.

The Planners of Mental Health Services

drew a line in the sand and opted for

a locked-door policy; in a land already

awash with pyramids,they sanctioned the building

of yet more in which to partition the mad.

Windowless, to deter would be suicides,

a single door serving as entrance and exit

to thwart potential runaways. One attendant

only entrusted with the password to open

and close the door. We know what it is like

not to remember the password: we perspire

and swear, stamp feet and curse the modern

technology. We can empathise, we think, 

but just imagine if the password

is in hieroglyphics.

 

In consequence both inmates and custodians

were trapped for many days within the edifice;

the patients, mad to begin with, emerged

relatively unscathed. Not so the unfortunate

attendants, stress and suspense culminating

in widespread mental breakdown. When all had

resurfaced, there was seen to be little difference

between the insane and their keepers. 

This phenomenon, whereby the sane become mad

through prolonged and involuntary confinement

at close quarters with the mentally ill,

earned the title "extra-pyramidal symptoms"

and could be observed until the fag-end

of the twentieth century, when the closure

of the outdated asylums saw the disorder

all but disappear in Western Europe.

It survives in isolated pockets

under strictly controlled conditions,

its virulence much diluted, its use

restricted to Reality TV and the like.