LONDON – Following a disturbing holiday episode in which noted moneylender Ebenezer Scrooge was found cackling, flailing, and raving to himself about “spirits,” the poor man was entrusted to local constables for depositing within Halliwick’s Asylum for the Mentally Deranged.
“Oh, ‘twas dreadful. Absolutely dreadful,” said Mrs. Eustace Dilber, Scrooge’s housekeeper. “I found him meself and he was running on about ghosts of days gone by and little crippled boys’ deaths and all sorts of prattle. Handing out money he was too, which was none too customary for one like Mr. Scrooge. I knew then and there the doctors had to have him.”
Upon being admitted to Halliwick’s, Scrooge was said to be diagnosed with Christmas Madness, a terrible affliction affecting the bodily humours, and one which utterly distorts a patient’s faculties. As Halliwick’s chief resident Dr. Phineas Scuzzledruff stated, “The condition is often incurable, no matter how much mercury a patient is given to drink.”
Should Scrooge’s Christmas Madness indeed prove beyond the reach of medical science, his lending house, Scrooge & Marley, will revert to the care of silent partners Luxington Pillbottom, the dowager Agatha Cuzzwattle, and Horatio Gomp.
Scrooge’s nephew, Fred Honeywell, was hopeful about his uncle’s prospects, however.
“Oh, my dear uncle is in good hands at Halliwick’s,” Honeywell said. “They have the finest doctors in London for leechings, lobotomies, and trepanations. He’ll be right as rain by New Year’s.”
