The fifteenth annual report of the committee of visitors of the County Lunatic Asylum at Colney Hatch : January quarter session, 1866 / [Middlesex County Lunatic Asylum].

London (England). County Lunatic Asylum, Colney Hatch.

Date:: [1866]

Credit: The fifteenth annual report of the committee of visitors of the County Lunatic Asylum at Colney Hatch : January quarter session, 1866 / [Middlesex County Lunatic Asylum]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

36/106 (page 34)

$1 “ Not Improved.” The Deaths (greater by 3 than in 1864) have been 127, their monthly maximum (17, as in the previous year) being reached in January, their minimum (5) falling equally to August and September. The quarterly death maximum is claimed by the second three months of the year, and the minimum by the third. The total number under care and treatment (greater by 27 than in 1864) has been 1,031; and the daily average has been 811, against 783 of the same year. The Recoveries have been 28*925 per cent, upon the Admissions, and 8*63 per cent, upon the daily average. The Deaths have been 52*56 per cent, upon the Admissions, and 15*659 per cent, upon the daily average. Large as is this proportion of Deaths (though it is a fraction per cent, less than in the previous year) we are almost surprised that it is not greater. The physical and mental condition of those admitted is so largely of a hopeless kind, as to leave us nothing to do but minister for a few days or weeks to the animal wants of wrecked and helpless beings. We ask, therefore, those who live in the outside world, and compare our statistics with those of Asylums more favoured as to the character of their admissions, not to measure our success (in the larger signification of the word) by our recoveries, but rather to guage it also by that which tells of our mortality. Nevertheless, it is my duty to state to the Visiting Justices my opinion, that we receive many Patients in the course of the year in such a state of extreme feebleness and exhaustion, as to have rendered their removal from$