Twenty-fifth annual report of the medical superintendent of the lunatic asylum, for the counties of Salop and Montgomery, and for the borough of Wenlock, 1869 / [Salop and Montgomeryshire Counties Lunatic Asylum].

  • Salop and Montgomeryshire Counties Lunatic Asylum.
Date:
1870
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Twenty-fifth annual report of the medical superintendent of the lunatic asylum, for the counties of Salop and Montgomery, and for the borough of Wenlock, 1869 / [Salop and Montgomeryshire Counties Lunatic Asylum]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    mother having suffered from Epileptic attacks. One Male died four days after admission from Apoplexy, superinduced by drink and exposure to the sun in harvest time : he had previously been an inmate of this Asylum. A demented patient one of our oldest residents died from Cerebral Disease. The decay of old age was fatal in six instances, in two cases it was complicated with Brain disease; one of these was 86 years of age, he came to the Asylum in a helpless feeble condition, having long outlived the sympathy and patience of his friends and relatives, and was to speak a sad truth, plainly, buried and forgotten by them long before he had died. Phlegmonous Erysipelas of the leg hastened the death of another paralytic male aged 79, after seven weeks residence in the Asylum. A male aged 45, on whom the only Inquest was held, was brought to the Asylum in a moribund condition, and shortly afterwards died. The Commissioners in Lunacy sent in a case from the Workhouse an unmanageable male aged 80, suffering from Dementia with serious disorganization of the pulmonary organs, he died sixteen days after admission. Of the twenty-three deaths occurring among the Eemales, fourteen were above the age of 50, six were above 70, and two were above 80 : the average age at the time of death being 58 years. Senile Decay and Pulmonary affections are the chief causes, forming about sixty-five per cent, of the entire death-rate. Cancer of the Uterus was fatal after a sojourn of eighteen months, in a person suffering from intense Melancholia, accompanied with great despondency and aversion to food. Two deaths resulted from disease of the Kidneys in demented patients, in whom the mental disease has existed for several years. Disease of the Heart was the cause of death in a patient who had been eighteen years insane previous to admission. A Congenital Idiot and Epileptic, aged 17, died after a residence of nine months from Epileptiform Convulsions. The death from organic disease of the Liver occurred in a woman whose insanity was hereditary, and who had previously been under treatment in this Asylum. When re¬ admitted the disease was in an advanced stage, she was greatly emaciated and exhausted, very averse to taking food, and subject to painful hallucinations of hearing and seeing; after lingering two months, death put an end to her sufferings. To the decay of old age may be attributed nine deaths, one of these a feeble fatuous woman aged 83, lingered for nearly two years, during the whole of which time she was unable to assist herself in any particular. Two other deaths from the same cause, aged respectively 72 and 76, had been resident in the Asylum for more than twenty years: another aged 80 brought from the Workhouse was moribund on admission and died soon afterwards. Erysipelas of the face and head hastened the death of a demented woman aged 73, who had been helpless for many years previously.