With this story Poe once again comments on an issue of public concern. In the nineteenth century, conditions in the mental asylums were increasingly regarded as inhumane and influential voices demanded reforms of what they thought were basically prisons for the ill. Against this backdrop, the system of soothing, in which the patients could walk about in the institution freely and were not corrected in their insane beliefs, must have appeared to more progressive minds.

Surprisingly, the narrator learns that the system has recently been abandoned in the French institution from which the ideas originated. What ensues is a long chain of highly enjoyable episodes clearly hinting at the true nature of the events unfolding. I'm sure it's meant to be funny that the many almost completely forthright explanations completely pass him by. Still, a bit like The Sixth Sense or with similar works, it also took me a while to notice the obvious. I love how in retrospect it becomes so very difficult to explain how you could have been so oblivious.

The twist is eventually delivered with full force, revealing the practice of tarring and feathering used in the revolt as well as acknowledging that the patient-turned-doctor was in fact the real doctor. It very well rounds off what is easily the best of Poe's science-fiction stories.