Providentia

The President and the Madman

While last January 30 may have come and gone without any fanfare, it marked an anniversary of sorts.  It was on that day in 1835 that the first assassination attempt on a United States president occurred.  Even that in itself may not have been all that noteworthy given later U.S. history but it was memorable all the same. 

The would-be assassin,  Richard Lawrence was born in England in or around the year 1800 (the exact date is lost to history).  There is little available information concerning his early life, only that he was a completely unremarkable house painter who became increasingly unstable and unemployable as he grew older.  While the prevailing opinion was that he was schizophrenic, later sources have suggested that his psychiatric problems may have been related to chemical exposure from the toxic paints that he had used as a painter. 

In any event, what was not in dispute was that he had developed some extremely grandiose delusions.  Not only did he believe himself to be King Richard III of England, but that he had somehow been wronged by then-President Andrew Jackson.  Lawrence became convinced that President Jackson cheated him out of money in a conspiracy with steamship companies and had murdered Lawrence's father as well.  To avenge his father's murder and punish President Jackson, Lawrence went to America, purchased two pistols, and began watching the President's movements carefully.  He finally had his chance when President Jackson went to the U.S. Capitol to attend the funeral of a prominent Congressman.  Lawrence chose his spot carefully and waited for the President to pass as he was emerging from the Capitol rotunda.  As the opportunity came, Lawrence drew his pistol and aimed at the President before firing at point-blank range, and then...   

Remembering Your Dreams

Cross-sectional studies indicate that dream recall frequency declines with age; longitudinal studies, however, are scarce. A new study reported in the journal Dreaming reported on two online dream studies carried out independently (N = 1,340 completed both surveys) which indicate that there is an overall decline in dream recall frequency, nightmare frequency, and lucid dreaming frequency, even though for the majority of the sample the 3 variables remained quite stable over this time interval. The reasons for this decline are yet poorly understood. Future longitudinal studies should include cognitive measures (visual memory), personality measures (thin boundaries), sleep parameters, stress measures, and attitude toward dreams scales to test whether changes in these measures might explain the changes in the recall measures.

For the abstract.

Mother Files Lawsuit Over Son's Bizarre Water Intoxication Death

A Michigan woman has filed a lawsuit against the Michigan Department of Corrections over the bizarre death of her son in prison last April.   According to attorneys for the plaintiff, Debra Scherbinski, her son, 41-year-old Kenneth Dalstra, died on April 8, 2014 due to medical complications stemming from his consuming large amounts of water.   Kenneth Dalstra was serving a 3 to 75-year sentence for criminal sexual misconduct and was reportedly suffering “seizure activity, full-blown schizophrenia, and [was] devoid of mental stability" according to the suit.   

After staff at the Richard A. Handlon Correctional Facility in Ionia, Michigan noticed on April 6, 2014 that he was drinking non-stop in his cell, Dalstra was assessed by a psychologist and subsequently placed on suicide watch.  The psychologist reported that Dalstra posed a moderate suicide risk and a suicide plan was put in place, including monitoring him every fifteen minutes.   Dalstra's behaviour then grew more bizarre, including taking off all his clothes, placing fecal matter on his eye,  and "spraying soap on his eyes" to wash out demons.  Though the water in his cell had been shut off at one point, guards then turned the water back on and Dalstra was able to continue his non-stop drinking.    

By April 8, Dalstra was found to be non-responsive in his cell and was later pronounced dead by paramedics.  The cause of death was believed to be water intoxication caused by psychogenic polydipsia.     This term is usually applied to people with psychiatric problems who drink large quantities of liquid due to a dry mouth sensation.   It is unclear at this point whether Dalstra intended to commit suicide though he had been drinking water non-stop for two hours before he was found in his  cell. 

The lawsuit is seeking at least $75,000 in damages as well as pain and suffering.   Three officers and other prison staff are also named as defendants as Debra Scherbinski reported personally telling prison officials that her son posed a danger to himself.    The lawsuit also alleges that prison staff members were well aware that the inmate "faced a substantial risk of serious harm" and "acted with deliberate indifference" to his health and safety. 

A spokesman for the Michigan Department of Corrections stated that Dalstra's death is still under investigation.

 

Exploring Facebook Depression

Can spending time on social networking sites like Facebook lead to depression?

There's no question that Facebook is popular given its 1.23 billion active users in countries around the world.  With status updates, chatrooms, personal messaging, and online games, Facebook seems to be a perfect social tool for staying in contact with friends and family members without ever needing to leave the house. So why do so many Facebook users report feeling depressed and lonely?  

A new review article published in Review of General Psychology (link is external) explores some of the factors that can lead to Facebook depression.   Written by Charlotte Rosalind Blease at University College Dublin, her article provides an overview of research into the behavioural impact of social media sites such as Facebook. She also examines how different theories of evolutionary psychology can help to explain why Facebook depression can occur. 

To read more, check out my new Psychology Today blog post.

 

 

 

The Case of Timothy Quill

It all began with a 1991 article in the New England Journal of Medicine. 

The author, Dr. Timothy Quill, had used this public forum to explain his reasons for assisting  a 45-year-old terminally ill leukemia patient,  whom he only referred to as “Dianne”, to end her life.   Quill, a Rochester, New York physician, was a professor of medicine at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry as well as associate chief of medicine at the Genessee Hospital.   He had been treating “Dianne” for eight years though aggressive cancer treatments did nothing more than prolong the pain she was experiencing.

While Dr. Quill had advised Dianne about the remaining options open to her, including chemotherapy and bone marrow transplants, she declined them all due to the limited chance for success and the debilitating side effects involved.   She had already seen the brutal effect of chemotherapy on other family members and friends who had undergone it and feared what her own protracted death would do to her  family.  Instead, after agonizing discussions with Dr. Quill and her own family, she asked his help in ending her life peacefully at home.   While Dianne told Dr. Quill  about her own sense of outrage over physician-assisted suicide being illegal, she knew that getting his help would be difficult.   He suggested that she contact the Hemlock Society, a national organization that advocates for terminally ill patients seeking to end their own lives as an end to pain.  Founded in 1980, the Society is dedicated to providing terminally ill patients with information on death and also advocating the legalization of physician-assisted suicide. 

Based on the information she received, including different methods by which she could end her life, Dianne asked her doctor to prescribe barbituates for “insomnia” though both she and Dr. Quill were aware of their potential use to commit suicide at a time of her own choosing.   Along with being powerful central nervous system depressants,  barbituates are also potentially lethal when taken in high doses (and have been used by some U.S. states for executing convicts in capital punishment cases).   After numerous meetings with Dianne and her family to discuss the ethical questions involved, Dr. Quill then arranged to have her talk to a psychologist to ensure that she not motivated by depression and understood the full implications of what she was requesting.  Based on the psychologist's findings, he then prescribed the barbituates and told Dianne how much would be needed for a lethal dose. 

When Dianne’s illness grew worse, her suffering increased as well.  Her friends and family, along with Dr. Quill, did everything they could to care for her but it wasn’t enough.  Just days after the barbituates were prescribed, Dianne finally decided to end her pain by taking the lethal dose alone.   In reporting her death to the medical examiner, Dr. Quill reported the cause of death as acute leukemia without mentioning suicide to avoid any police investigation. 

As you might expect, Dr. Quill’s public admission to assisting a suicide provoked a major legal and media firestorm.   Interviewed in 1991 by the New York Times, he stated that he had never assisted a patient to commit suicide before or since but he was aware of other cases in which doctors had hastened death at a patient's request.  Timothy Quill was invited onto all of the news-related programs that were exploring the question of physician-assisted suicide.   That included “Dateline”, “20/20”, and “Nightline.”   He also reprinted his journal article in his first book, Death and Dignity:  Making Choices and Taking Charge, which was published in 1994.   This book also included vignettes featuring other terminally-ill patients as well as information on the Hemlock Society and how to cope with death and dying. 

Though his public revelation of assisting in a suicide stunned the medical community, Timothy Quill  was never charged for his role in Dianne’s death.  Still, the question of physical-assisted suicide remained given New York legislation that makes it a crime to give lethal drugs to dying patients.  While no physicians have been prosecuted under this legislation, the penalty for a successful conviction can be as much as four years in prison.

At the same time, Michigan pathologist Dr. Jack Kevorkian was already making headlines for his own advocacy of physician-assisted suicide (though Kevorkian was not  a treating physician,  his involvement in patient suicide would later lead to his second-degree murder conviction in 1999).   It was the mixed reaction to Kevorkian's crusade, as well as  the active opposition to physician-assisted suicide in many U.S. states that convinced Quill to publish his article.  

Legal cases began springing up in different states, beginning in Washington, to challenge the constitutionality of laws banning physician-assisted suicide.   This would eventually set the stage for the groundbreaking Quill vs. Vacco legal decision in 1997.   

Soon after the 1991 article came out, Timothy Quill and a coalition of doctors and terminally-ill patients filed suit to have New York's ban on physician assisted suicide overturned.   The suit specifically named New York's then-Attorney General Dennis Vacco and argued that the law violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.   In other words, if patients could refuse potentially life-saving treatment, why couldn't they receive active assistance from their doctors to end their lives? 

When the District Court ruled in favour of the New York legislation,  the decision was overturned on appeal and the question was eventually passed on to the U.S. Supreme Court.   Finally in a rare 9-0 legal decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled to uphold the state's right to protect patient life and had a compelling interest in opposing physician-assisted suicide. Still,  the decision also left the door open for individual states to pass laws allowing physician-assisted suicide   In handing down the ruling, the Court  recognized that terminally ill patients have a constitutional right to medication to ease their pain, even if their death might be hastened in the process.  The Supreme Court justices concluded their decision by stating  “Americans are engaged in an earnest and profound debate about the morality, legality and practicality of physician-assisted suicide. Our holding permits this debate to continue, as it should in a democratic society.”

In the meantime however, the fight to allow physician-assisted suicide was being won in other states.   In Oregon, for example, the passage of the Oregon Death With Dignity Act in 1994 legalized physician-assisted suicide (with certain restrictions).   According to the Oregon act, physicians could prescribe medication for ending a life though patients needed to take the medication themselves.   Patients also needed to be Oregon residents to prevent "suicide tourism" by patients from other states seeking to end their lives.   Other states that have enacted similar laws include Washington, Vermont, and possibly New Mexico depending on the success of a recent court case.   

But physician-assisted suicide has also become a major issue in other countries as well.   Although Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg have all passed laws allowing assisted suicide under specific conditions, other countries continue to grapple with the complex legal and moral issues involved.    This has led to the establishment of "suicide clinics" in countries such as Switzerland though their legal status is still being questioned. 

In my own country, Canada, the ban on physician-assisted suicide has just been struck down with the historic Carter v Canada decision by the Supreme Court of Canada.  Since the Federal government has been slow to respond (and has actively opposed physician-assisted suicide in the past), it is still unclear at this point whether the current government will be tackling this issue in an election year.  In all likelihood, this issue will ultimately be left up to individual provinces to deal with on their own.

As for Timothy Quill, he remains active in the palliative care movement and the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine included him in their list of 'Hospice and Palliative Medicine Visionaries' in 2013.   At this time, physician-assisted suicide is still illegal in the state of New York.

 

 

 

 

The Benjamin Rush Prescription (Part 2 of 2)

Continued from Part 1

Despite being an abolitionist, Benjamin Rush's racial views suggested little actual tolerance for racial minorities.  He argued that "Negroes" suffered from a skin condition which he labelled "negritude" (akin to leprosy) and that the only cure was for them to become white.   While there was no indication that he ever treated African-Americans for this "disease", he argued against intermarriage between races to ensure that negritude would not be spread further.

Of course, Benjamin Rush is best known as the "father of American psychiatry".  In 1812, he published Medical Inquiries and Observations upon the Diseases of the Mind, which became the standard American textbook for treating the mentally ill for most of the 19th century.   Based on his own practices with mental patients in the Pennsylvania Hospital, Rush concluded that mental illness was caused by faulty circulation in the blood vessels of the brain.  He also supported the popular idea of "faculty psychology", that humans were born with specific "faculties" of logic, emotion, and behaviour linked to specific areas of the brain.    He was the first to coin the term "phrenology" as it related to the study of how the brain was linked to specific faculties although he had nothing to do with how the pseudoscience that eventually became associated with the word.   

Appalled by the poor care that mental patients received (whether in hospitals or confined in their family homes), he became an advocate of the moral treatment pioneered by Philippe Pinel, William Tuke, and other European reformers.   Benjamin Rush led the campaign in 1792 to build a new hospital wing for mental patients where they could be treated more humanely.   By the turn of the 19th century, a massive drive for reforming how the mentally ill should be treated sprang up on both sides of the Atlantic.  Sparked by the very public insanity of King George III and his ongoing need for humane care, the conventional "madhouse" approach was rejected in favour of more humane alternatives.   While medicine was often inadequate to deal with the causes and effective treatment of various types of mental illness, moral treatment advocates stressed that mentally ill or brain-damaged patients could be rehabilitated and trained to do useful work.   Although Rush believed that poor brain circulation was the cause of insanity, other reformers suggested that insanity was due to direct or indirect brain damage that could be linked to "overwrought emotions or strained intellectual facilities".   

Certain  groups were specifically targeted as being at high risk for developing mental illness (and likely stigmatized them in the process).  Rush in particular identified,

• Children of insane parents
• Individuals who were isolated and lonely, such as unmarried persons or women living in frontier settlements
• Those with dark hair
• People between the age of twenty and fifty
• The "rich and idle who unlike the toiling, pragmatic poor, had leisure to look back upon past and to anticipate future, and imaginary, evils"

Rush also pointed out that certain occupations were more susceptible to insanity than others because they "dwelled too much on emotions" and tended not to be grounded in reality.  He cited Philippe Pinel who suggested that painters, poets, sculptors, and musicians were especially vulnerable while scientists were relatively immune. 

Although Benjamin Rush continued to stress that insanity was due to physical causes, the treatments that he advocated ranged from the practical to the bizarre.   Along with his familiar standby, bloodletting, he also advocated purgatives and emetics (his "thunderclappers" likely got a lot of use as well).   In keeping with his own views on blood circulation in the brain causing insanity, bloodletting was often aggressive.  In cases of mania, patients were restrained while a vein was opened (including the jugular vein in extreme cases).  For younger patients, the bleeding occurred while they were held upright to encourage fainting "to diminish excessive arterial action in the brain".   Calomel (i.e., mercury) was used in treating melancholia.  Not content to rely on standard medical treatments, Rush  also developed a remarkable invention. Based on circulating swings used by English doctors,  Rush's own innovation, the gyrator, used centrifugal force with patients sitting in the machine as they were spun around.  Intended to force blood to the brain, Rush was dissatified with the results and commented that "it would be more perfect did it permit the head to at a greater distance from the center of motion".   He also invented a better system of restraint which he dubbed "the tranquilizer". 

For Rush, the most painful case of his career involved dealing with his eldest son, John.  In 1807, just a few months after killing a man in a duel, John  Rush's mental state went into a downhill spiral which eventually led to his becoming completely insane by the end of the following year.  A once-promising military officer, John Rush made several suicide attempts (as well as attempting to kill his doctor and other medical staff dealing with him).  He was eventually sent to Philadelphia Hospital so that his eminent father could oversee his treatment.   In a memorable letter written to Benjamin Rush by his son's commanding officer, the commandant described his bizarre behaviour and John Rush's skill at hiding a razor on his person despite repeated searches.   Although John's emotional state often varied with long episodes of relative normality (suggesting some form of Bipolar Disorder), he eventually became a patient of his father by 1810.   Despite attempts by his family to deal with him at home, he was later placed in Pennsylvania Hospital in the new wing for mental patients that his father had built.    After diagnosing him with "melancholy derangement", Benjamin Rush left John's treatment to other doctors.  Despite changes in John Rush's condition with occasional releases from the hospital, he would eventually die there in 1837.

After Benjamin Rush's death in 1813, psychiatry fell into long neglect with few lectures being given on the subject in medical schools for decades afterward.   Despite the criticisms of Amariah Brigham and other reformers, Rush continued to be venerated as the chief authority on how the mentally ill should be treated, including the use of bleeding in treating patients well into the 1850s.   When Pliny Earle published An Examination of the Practice of Bloodletting in Mental Disorders in 1854, he argued against Rush's recommended bleeding practices on the grounds that bloodletting had fallen out of favour in most hospitals (although some European doctors were still using cupping and leeches at that time).   Despite the changing attitude towards bleeding, Earle still needed to be diplomatic about Rush given his stature in the field.   There was still considerable resistance however since the asylums were filled with patients who were completely resistant to any form of treatment.  It would not until the 20th century that better methods would become available.

Although Benjamin Rush's theories haven't stood the test of time, his complex legacy and the impact that he had on later American psychiatrists is considerable.  Not only is his silhouette on the formal seal of the American Psychiatric Association but Chicago's Rush University is named for him.  Although it is easy to criticize his antiquated treatment methods, which likely did far more harm than good, he also revolutionized psychiatric hospitals and prisons at a time when they were little better than medieval dungeons.  

In many ways, Benjamin Rush was very much a pioneer.  Perhaps that is how he would have liked to be remembered.

Getting the Homeless off the Streets

An article recently published in the Journal of Family Psychology reports 2-year outcomes from a cluster randomized, controlled trial of the Early Risers (ER) program implemented as a selective preventive intervention in supportive housing settings for homeless families. Based on the goals of this comprehensive prevention program, the authors predicted that intervention participants receiving ER services would show improvement in parenting and child outcomes relative to families in treatment-as-usual sites. The sample included 270 children in 161 families, residing in 15 supportive housing sites; multimethod, multi-informant assessments conducted at baseline and yearly thereafter included parent and teacher report of child adjustment, parent report of parenting self-efficacy, and parent–child observations that yielded scores of effective parenting practices. Data were modeled in HLM7 (4-level model accounting for nesting of children within families and families within housing sites). Two years’ postbaseline, intent-to-treat (ITT) analyses indicated that parents in the ER group showed significantly improved parenting self-efficacy, and parent report indicated significant reductions in ER group children’s depression. No main effects of ITT were shown for observed parenting effectiveness. However, over time, average levels of parenting self-efficacy predicted observed effective parenting practices, and observed effective parenting practices predicted improvements in both teacher- and parent-report of child adjustment. This is the first study  to demonstrate prevention effects of a program for homeless families residing in family supportive housing.

For the abstract.

Fighting "Dehomosexualization" in Ecuador

For the transgender man identified only as "Jorge", the ordeal began when his girlfriend's mother caught him them together in her home in Ecuador.    Shortly afterward, the girlfriend was forcefully abducted and placed in a private rehabilitation hospital offering "behaviour therapy" aimed at changing sexual interest.    Several months later, Jorge's parents made arrangements for Jorge to be forcibly placed there as well.   In his case, his parents wanted him to give up identifying himself as  a man and return to being a traditional Ecuadoran female.  Loosely based on the "Twelve-steps" model endorsed by Alcoholics Anonymous, Jorge was kept a prisoner in the clinic and denied any contact with his girlfriend or outside agencies that could help him.  He was also forced to dress in enticing female clothing, to read Bible passages each day, and also to endure physical beatings.    He was only able to win his release after seven months of this kind of abuse.

Though most of these private hospital focus on treating drug and alcohol addiction, some have quietly begun offering behaviour modification programs aimed at "behaviour disorders", a convenient label that is often extended to homosexuality and transgender cases in a society that still has difficulty accepting sexual minorities.   While forced-conversion treatment is illegal under Ecuadoran law, getting police to investigate and lay charges is often difficult.   With more than two hundred of these centres, most of which are poorly monitored, investigating every complaint can be expensive, especially in a country that has gutted much of its public health spending.  

Over the past fifteen years, the number of addiction clinics has soared and can now be found in every part of the country, often with little real oversight.  This has allowed many of these addiction centres to quietly  expand their mandate to include what local activists refer to as "dehomosexualization".   Since many families, and the clinics themselves, regard homosexuality as an addiction, forcing their gay and lesbian children into these clinics for treatment, even though illegal, seems their only hope for a "cure."    Much like the treatment of addiction, these clinics tell their homosexual clients that they will be forcibly held "til you change."    Whatever the tactics used, they all focus on "garroterapia" (therapy by the stick), something that has earned them the nickname of "Nazi clinics." 

Since few, if any of these centres, operate with qualified professionals, former patients seeking to lay a complaint have few real options.  Most of the clinics are run by former substance abusers who graduated from treatment themselves and started their own clinics as a way of making a living.   By diversifying the services they offer, including the "treatment" of homosexuality, these clinics hope to make a lucrative living, and many become extremely successful. 

While the Ecuadoran government has passed laws banning many of the most abusive practices, including the use of restraints, solitary confinement, beatings, and forced drugging,  these practices still continue.   Even clinics that have been shut down by the Ministry of Health multiple times are able to keep operating by closing and reopening their doors in the same facility or at a nearby location.

Still, these crackdowns only deal with the places supplying services that parents of gay children want.   Educating the public that these kind of forced conversion programs don't work and that homosexuality is something that needs to be accepted rather than changed will likely take much longer.

As for Jorge and all the others caught in this terrible vise, the fear of being forced to undergo "dehomosexualization" remains very real.

For more information

 

 

 

 

 

Are Teenagers Getting Enough Sleep?

How much sleep should a teenager be getting at night?

The amount of sleep children need is going to change dramatically as they grow older.   Up to the age of three months, infants sleep anywhere from ten to eighteen hours a day with no real sleep schedule (something their bleary-eyed parents know all too well).  As they move through the toddler phase, their sleep schedule is more predictable though they still need about eleven to fourteen hours of sleep each night.  By the time they reach school age, nine to eleven hours of sleep at night is usually needed to keep children mentally active during the day.

And then adolescence kicks in...

According to a  new review article published in the journal Translational Issues in Psychological Science, it is during adolescence that many of the problems associated with sleep loss become more serious.   Written by Natalie B. Bryant and Rebecca L. Gomez of the University of Arizona, the article outlines much of the research looking at the different consequences of sleep loss in adolescents and why parents need to take this more seriously.

To read more, check out my new Psychology Today blog post.

The Possession of James Davenport (Part Two of Two)

Continued from Part One

Some of the available descriptions of James Davenport's bizarre behaviour at his new trial are downright entertaining.  According to one new story:

"At one point everyone there heard him "vehemently crying out, That he saw hell-flames slashing in their faces; and that they were now! now! dropping down to hell; and also added, Lord! Thou knowest that there are many in that gallery and in these seats, that are now dropping down to Hell! etc.”

Screaming about persecution, Davenport compared himself to Christ with his own suffering and, when the sheriff tried to eject him, he shouted "Lord! thou knowest somebody’s got hold of my sleeve, strike them! Lord, strike them—".     A mob of his supporters quickly gathered and attacked the sheriff and his deputies as they led Davenport to jail.  

On the following day, the court concluded that Davenport was insane and deported him from the Connecticut colony.   Though supporters tried to stop them, Davenport and his assistant were shipped back to Long Island.   Once there, he discovered that his old parishioners were rather tired of his antics and frequent absences.    He was basically ordered to stay at home and tend to his own congregation but Davenport was unrepentant.  As far as he was concerned, he was one of the leading lights of the new Evangelical movement and his crusade would continue.

By 1742, his crusading had taken him to Boston where a group of ministers promptly ordered to explain his attacks on fellow preachers.  His critics included many Evangelists who refused to allow him to preach to their own parishioners.   But this didn't stop him.  Instead, he took to the streets and held open-air rallies that would last whole nights.  As one Boston newspaper described it: 

"Though were you to see him in his most violent Agitations, you would be apt to think, that he was a Madman just broke from his Chaines: But especially had you seen him returning from the Commons after his first preaching, with a large Mob at his heels, singing all the Way thro’ the streets, he with his Hands extended, his Head thrown back, and his Eyes staring up to Heaven, attended with so much Disorder that they look’d more like a company of Bacchanalians after a mad Frolick than sober Christians who had been worshipping God."

People in Boston were forced to put up with Davenport and his disciples singing hymns in the streets at all hours, day or night.  Most of these followers were young people, including children, from the less well-off segments of Boston society.   Though some of them simply came to watch the antics, Davenport's vicious attacks on fellow clergy proved to be extremely popular.  Like everywhere else he went though, Davenport divided Boston society and his exhausted critics finally persuaded Boston magistrates to have him arrested and put on trial.

And what a trial it was!

Davenport was in fine form throughout the hearing, denouncing the unconverted ministers and making grim prophecies about what would happen to them when they faced judgment.  His supporters predictably insisted that he was being persecuted though he was extremely well-treated while in jail (his jailors likely worried about mob violence if any reports of abuse got out).   The outcome was never really in doubt though.   The only two holdouts in the jury were a Quaker and a lay supporter, both of whom objected to the trial being held at all.   When the court declared Davenport to be non comp0s mentis, he promptly decamped for a more congenial city.   It took a considerable amount of time for things to settle down in Boston afterward and his trial would remain a hot issue for years.

The final saga in James Davenport's strange career occurred in 1743 when he was invited to New London, Connecticut.   Despite having already been deported (and risking a heavy fine in the process), Davenport and one of his chief disciples, Daniel Tuthill, set sail immediately.  By this time, Davenport was visibly weaker because of his health problems.   He needed Tuthill's help to walk but this hardly deterred him from his mission.   On arriving in New London, he preached to his followers about the "Messages which he said, he received from the Spirit in Dreams and otherwise, importing the great Necessity of Mortification and Contempt of the World.” 

To accomplish this great goal, Davenport encouraged his followers to throw away any worldly possessions to which they were attached.  Along with wigs, fine clothing,artworks, and jewelry, they also had to throw away those books he deemed offensive.   To nobody's surprise, this included books by religious authors he regarded as "unconverted", including some of his own fellow Evangelists.  These various works were destroyed in two "bonfires of the vanities" in which his followers danced around the flames while these books were still burning.  

During the last of these bonfires, Davenport and his followers were reportedly in a state of hysteria as they cast clothing onto the bonfire.  According to one account, "ome of them in the heighth of their Zeal, conferred not with Flesh and Blood, but fell to stripping and cast their Cloaths down at their Apostle’s Feet; one or two hesitated about the Matter, and were so bold as to tell him they had nothing on which they idoliz’d: He reply’d, that such and such a Thing was an Offense to him; and they must down with them."   Davenport, in his zeal, began stripping off his own clothing, including his breeches which he then threw on the fire.   One woman, perhaps a little distressed by this radical act, snatched the breeches from the fire and basically told the good Reverend to restrain himself.  This was apparently what broke the spell and made Davenport realize that he had gone too far.

And, that was pretty much it for James Davenport.   While his other antics had done little to curb the enthusiasm of his followers, indecent exposure was a bit much for them.   He left town soon afterward and, because of declining health, he was taken home to recover.  As for the local townspeople who had taken part in the book burnings, they were later charged though most of them just got off with small fines.  A council of ministers was held later that year which marked the end of Davenport's crusade, not to mention the Great Awakening itself.   While Evangelism still continued, the zeal was somewhat more restrained from that point onward.

As for the Reverend Davenport, he was deeply disturbed by the New London incident and began to wonder whether he had been possessed by God or Satan.  His doubts about what he had been doing, not to mention the deep schism he had caused, left him depressed.   Though he still believed that the Holy Spirit had spoken to him, he recognized that he he had been too arrogant in denouncing his fellow preachers.   By 1744, he had recovered enough to go on a "repentance tour" visiting many of the towns in which he  had carried out his most outrageous episodes so he could personally apologize for what he had done. 

Still, while he was considerably wiser, his great success as a preacher was largely behind him.  His movement broke up and he was largely abandoned by almost everyone, even his "armour bearer" Daniel Tuthill.  Though he made a new tour across Connecticut in which he personally apologized to many of the ministers he had previously denounced,  the spirit had largely gone out of him.  In 1744, he wrote The Confessions and Retractions of James Davenport in which he publicly apologized for much of what he had said in the past and blamed himself for "falling into the Snare of the Devil." 

Reaction to Davenport's confession was largely mixed.  Some critics argued that he didn't go far enough in apologizing considering the harm he had already done while others were prepared to accept his apology at face value.  Davenport resigned his Long Island post and went to a new church in New Jersey where he would spend the rest of his days.  Somewhere along the way, he managed to marry and have three children though little else is known about this final period in his life.  In 1756, with the outbreak of the Seven Years' War, Davenport made one last proclamation that the war was an omen of the coming Apocalypse,  A year later, he was dead at the age of forty-one. 

So what can anyone say about James Davenport's legacy?  His fervent crusading and his humiliating disgrace can probably serve as a warning for modern evangelists whose outrageous claims have a way of blowing up in their faces.   If nothing else, his antics can be considered a prime example of the dangers of hubris (not to mention, ahem, overexposure).   Sadly, modern day pundits seem determined to fall into the same trap as Davenport, even if they definitely lack his personal charisma. 

In an era of smartphones and social media, embarrassing moments have a way of being recorded for posterity.   We may be seeing quite a few "penitence tours" in the years to come.