The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether

Plot summary

An unnamed narrator visits a mental institution in southern France, a "Maison de Santé" known for a revolutionary treatment called the "system of soothing". A travelling companion introduces him to the hospital's superintendent, Monsieur Maillard, then rides ahead. The narrator learns that the system of soothing has been abandoned and replaced with a method partly devised by Maillard. He tours the grounds and is invited to dinner, where the guests wear overly gaudy, ill-fitting clothing.

A lavish meal is served, with many candles placed around the table and room, and a musical ensemble whose performance grows increasingly loud and cacophonous. Several guests describe unusual behaviors of patients and act them out; Maillard occasionally tries to calm them, while the narrator grows concerned. Maillard explains that the current treatment is based on the work of "Doctor Tarr" and "Professor Fether", names unfamiliar to the narrator. The system of soothing was abandoned after patients at one hospital, given great liberty, conspired to overpower the staff and lock them in the patients' rooms.

Led by a man claiming to have invented a better method, the patients took over the hospital and allowed no visitors except one man deemed too stupid to cause trouble. The dinner conversation is interrupted by yells from outside.

As the narrator asks how order was restored, a group of figures covered in tar and feathers bursts in. The narrator realizes Maillard had been describing his own hospital: he had gone insane and been committed as a patient, a fact unknown to the travelling companion. The staff had been tarred and feathered and locked in rooms, but one escaped through the sewers and freed the rest.

Analysis

At the time of the story's writing, asylum reform was a significant political issue in the United States, with calls to treat the mentally ill less like prisoners, while increased insanity-defense acquittals drew criticism. The story has been interpreted as satirical political commentary on American democracy, a parody of Charles Dickens and Nathaniel Parker Willis, and a critique of 19th-century medical practices.

Adaptations

Edgar Allan Poe's story has inspired many adaptations across different media. In 1903, a stage version titled Le Système du Dr Goudron et Pr Plume was performed at Paris's Théâtre du Grand Guignol, adapted by André de Lorde. A decade later, Maurice Tourneur directed the French film Le système du docteur Goudron et du professeur Plume, also released as The System of Doctor Goudron and The Lunatics. The 1932 German film Unheimliche Geschichten weaves together Poe's "The Black Cat" and this tale.

Vieri Tosatti composed the opera Il sistema della dolcezza in 1948. The 1954 Spanish film Manicomio draws on multiple authors, including Poe. An episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour titled "A Home Away from Home" aired on 27 September 1963, starring Ray Milland. Poland produced a TV movie called System in 1972.

The surreal Mexican film La mansión de la locura (1973), known in English as The Mansion of Madness, Dr. Tarr's Torture Dungeon, or House of Madness, was directed by Juan López Moctezuma. That same year, S. F. Brownrigg's movie The Forgotten, also titled Death Ward #13 and Don't Look in the Basement, offered another adaptation. The Alan Parsons Project included "(The System of) Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether" as the fifth track on their album Tales of Mystery and Imagination.

Czech filmmaker Jan Švankmajer incorporated elements of this story into his film Lunacy, alongside Poe's "The Premature Burial" and works by the Marquis de Sade. A one-act opera, A Method for Madness (1999), was composed by David S. Bernstein with a libretto by Charles Kondek. The animated Spanish stop-motion film Gritos en el Pasillo (2007, English title "Going Nuts"), directed by Juanjo Ramírez, uses peanuts and draws partly from the story. Short film adaptations include The System of Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether (2008, set in Philadelphia) and Tohtori Tarrin ja professori Featherin menetelmä (2012). A 2014 film adaptation is titled Stonehearst Asylum.