The Best Specimen of a Tyrant

AWARDED THE WISCONSIN HISTORICAL SOCIETY "BOOK OF MERIT" FOR 2008 AS THE YEAR'S BEST BOOK ABOUT WISCONSIN HISTORY. The Best Specimen of a Tyrant is the true story of an ambitious physician's stormy tenure as superintendent of the Wisconsin Insane Hospital in its early years. During the Civil War, Dr. Abraham Van Norstrand had pieced together one of the Union army's biggest hospitals and toiled over its operating tables, saving hundreds upon hundreds of battle-torn soldiers - while secretly monopolizing the lucrative whiskey trade that kept their comrades drunk. Back home, he succeeded where others had failed, taking charge of the Wisconsin Insane Hospital and ruling tirelessly - while assaulting patients and serving them tainted food purchased from his own grocery store. Whether caught up in the gold rush mindset of the frontier, the topsy-turvy moral climate of the lower Mississippi in wartime, or the lure of the vaunted new "hospital movement" (and its emerging dark side) , Van Norstrand never stopped chasing after the elusive fortune he had come west to find, crossing swords with some of the great names of his era along the way. But he met his match in the person of a moral crusader and - to all appearances - pristine do-gooder named Samuel Hastings. In the end, neither his long-sought wealth nor his uncanny gift for knowing when to cut and run could save him from the bitter heartache he never saw coming. The story of his rise and fall is also the story of the clash between great expectations and hard choices that plagued public hospitals across the country in the mid-19th century, thereby undermining public confidence in them for generations to come.