Thirty-third annual report of the Suffolk Lunatic Asylum : December, 1870.

  • Suffolk Lunatic Asylum.
Date:
[1871]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Thirty-third annual report of the Suffolk Lunatic Asylum : December, 1870. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    to state any symptom which, could warrant his detention. Evidence on facts is not always so readily obtainable: as appeared in the case of a poor woman lately admitted. She was a midwife; and her impression on admission continued throughout her short residence, with the strange delusion that all the other females needed her professional skill. A statement which was most happily negatived. The poor woman has since died. Every patient is most carefully examined on admission, and special entries made of the slightest marks of violence. This has indeed become an imperative protection against misrepresentations: and misrepresentations are sad draw¬ backs to philanthropic efforts. Cases might be particularized where marks of violence and injury previous to admission, might if unobserved at the time, have led to very unjust and erroneous conclusions afterwards. To disentangle complicated cases is not always an easy task: the disease itself is frequently overlooked in a symptom, and the symptom treated in forgetfulness of the disease : hence the great value of discrimination, experience, and judgment; the symptom may be clear and obvious enough, but the cause is often most difficult to ascertain, and some¬ times it may be inscrutable. A true knowledge of the state of the organ, and duration and stage of its disordered function or tissue, determines not alone the right method of treatment, but the possibility or probability of cure. The several departments of occult science, palpable observation, and subtle remedial processes are in these days of progress most numerous and active, and any one of them is sufficient to occupy the attention of any individual. The diseases of the mind which formerly were almost unheeded, and their treatment cruel and extreme, have become now the subject of separate study and investigation and research. The duty of the physiologist embraces no limited sphere of action: it is to study the changes which take place not in