Sixteenth annual report of the trustees of the State Lunatic Hospital at Worcester. December, 1848.

  • State Lunatic Hospital at Worcester.
Date:
1849
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Sixteenth annual report of the trustees of the State Lunatic Hospital at Worcester. December, 1848. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    carries our hearty thanks and our kindest wishes. Since his resigna¬ tion, the duties of Steward have been discharged under the imme- diate direction of the Superintendent, until the first December, when Mr. Thomas Hill was appointed Steward. Miss Elizabeth A. Reed has been appointed Matron. Dr. Rufus Woodward, one of the assistant physicians, has vacated his place to visit the hospitals of Europe, that he may become inti¬ mately acquainted with their arrangement, and the mode of treatment adopted in them, and the more completely to perfect himself in his profession. The vacancy was supplied by the appointment of Dr. Thomas E. Hatch, who has performed the labors allotted to him with success and ability, but who has been compelled to give them up on account of ill health. To him, and to Dr. John R. Lee, the senior assistant, an acknowledgment is due for their valuable services. Dr. Merrick Bemis has been appointed in his place. During the past year, fifteen strong rooms for the more violent fe¬ male patients have been completed and brought into use. They fully answer the expectations of those having charge of the Hospital, and the result proves them to have been a desideratum, for they are of the greatest utility in promoting the comfort of the more quietly disposed patients, by removing from their wards those more excited. The amount paid for the building containing the strong rooms, as shown by the Treasurer’s account, is forty-six hundred seventy-three dollars and seventy-seven cents. By a resolve of the Legislature, in 1847, the Trustees were authorized to use the balance of the Johon- not Fund, thirty-seven hundred eleven dollars and fifty-three cents, together with an appropriation of six thousand dollars from the State Treasury, for the purpose of erecting strong rooms for the more furi¬ ously insane. Only fifteen hundred dollars of that appropriation have been drawn from the State Treasury; there is now in the hands of the Treasurer of that fund, five hundred sixty-five dollars and seventy-six cents. The average number of patients, the past year, has been four hun¬ dred and four, one hundred and fifty of whom are foreigners, and mostly State paupers. The maximum capacity of the Hospital for the comfortable accommodation of patients, and the most effectual appli¬ cation of remedial treatment, has, some time since, been reached, so that now the Institution labors under a disadvantage, notwithstanding the addition of the fifteen strong rooms. The number of incurables is every year increasing, consequently,