Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Arkham Sanitarium Bill For Services

Today we have another prop document for the Arkham Sanitarium project, this time a bill for services. While the earlier paper props were the kind of thing that would be included in a patient file, this would be more appropriate as something discovered in household papers or a lawyer's client file.

You can download the PDF from Google Docs over here.

4 comments:

Alex Kaeda said...

I love this. Its exactly the sort of thing that would be found in a pile of documents, that would lead an investigator to look into "Uncle Joe's time in the sanitarium"

Raven said...

If I'm reading this right, it seems to (very discreetly) omit the name of the patient / client / family member, and for that matter, the person being billed... meaning it can't be waved around to embarrass or blackmail anyone.

Strictly speaking, there's nothing provably linking this to "Uncle Joe". That's only a suspicion, unless you find other correspondence, or go to the Sanitarium itself to check its records....

Propnomicon said...

The form does intentionally avoid any names. Given the selectivity that a private institution could practice I imagine things like billing would be handled by surrogates to prevent embarrassment.

Assuming, of course, that the patient wanted to keep it secret. I suspect there's a significant clientele that use Arkham Sanitarium like the other sanitariums of the time- as a resort. It wasn't unusual at all for private institutions to be filled with upper class patrons that were, for all intents and purposes, taking vacations.

Raven said...

But if the "Medicine" portion of the bill lists strong antipsychotics, the "vacation" hypothesis carries a bit less weight....