Chapter Thirty
The PoetSonyea, New York
August 25, 1926
Dr. Frederick Peterson stood for several minutes outside the hospital that bore his name. He had travelled overnight from his home in Manhattan to the Craig Colony in Sonyea. Although Peterson was the colony’s founder and first president, it had been named after a financial benefactor, Oscar Craig.
Peterson was also largely responsible for the colony’s novel treatment of its “residents.” The Craig Colony was, by design, home to patients suffering from a variety of seizure disorders. In 1926, those seizures were all lumped under the same diagnosis: epilepsy. The medical treatment for its “residents,” was the “Colony Care Plan,” first conceived by Dr. Peterson while he was a physician at the Hudson River State Hospital for the Insa
