A descriptive notice of the Sussex Lunatic Asylum, Haywards Heath (opened 25th July, 1859) / by C. Lockhart Robertson.

  • Robertson, C. Lockhart (Charles Lockhart), 1825-1897.
Date:
[1859?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A descriptive notice of the Sussex Lunatic Asylum, Haywards Heath (opened 25th July, 1859) / by C. Lockhart Robertson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    J-1- In this diet scale, cocoa and bread are given at breakfast in order to reduce the cost. It is a much cheaper, as well as more nutritive article than tea, and saves the expense of butter. If the dairy were in full operation, and it could be made entirely with milk, I should consider cocoa so pre- pared, the best article for breakfast to be found. A propor- tion of bread is made every day with the unsifted wheat, the home-made bran bread, and which many of the patients prefer. It is much more wholesome. Sweet cake, made with lard, sugar and carraway seed, is a fraction cheaper than bread and butter, and I find is better liked by the patients. For the Sunday dinner, I gave in the first instance, treacle with the suet pudding, but have since substituted a quarter of a pound of pork or bacon. I made Sunday the jour maigre, in order to lessen the household work, and also because no work being done by the patients that day, they require, I think, less nourishment. On three days of the week, I have the fresh meat, generally mutton, cooked as Scotch broth. This, as will be seen by a reference to its composition, is a very different article from English hospital soup, made out of the liquor of the meat of the day before. The rice, barley, and vegetables, with the fresh meat, make a most savoury and nutritive mess, and it is quite a mistake to think that such diet predisposes to diarrhoea. Vegetable acids do not produce diarrhoea. Such opinions are the re- flex of the views, which treated, or rather aggravated, dyspepsia, on a mutton chop, dry bread, and a glass of sherry. It was the Leamington plan of practice, but a very ignorant one, in my opinion. My mutton broth is so appre- ciated, that the officers of the house generally pay it the compliment of taking a bason of it for luncheon. On the two full meat dinners, I have the allowance of bread cooked in the shape of Norfolk dumplings, i.e., merely dough steamed instead of baked. They are light and digestible, and make a pleasant variety. The meat is roasted one day and baked the other. We have thus very little dripping. All the nourishment of our meat is consumed in the bi'oth, and we have to buy lard for the seed cake, having only enough dripping to make the vegetable pie once a week, on Thursdays. There is just enough meat added to give flavour and gravy to these pies. If expense were not an object to be attended to in framing such a diet scale, I should have increased the weekly allowance of meal (uncooked) to 56 ounces, instead of the