On the supposed increase of insanity / by Edward Jarvis.

  • Jarvis, Edward, 1803-1884.
Date:
[1852]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the supposed increase of insanity / by Edward Jarvis. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

    6/36
    support, causes of disease, and mortality during the seven years from 1835 to 1841 inclusive. This is a State document; it is prepared and published by the Minister of Agriculture and Commerce; it comes with all the authority of the Government; and, without doubt, it contains all the facts that were then known in regard to the lunatics of France. Yet there is an appa- rent want of completeness in its statements. This report gives accounts of the lunatics in hospitals and hospices, in poorhouses, and prisons and all other public and private establishments for their cure or custo- dy. It includes those lunatics who were kept at home with their own friends, or were boarded in other private families, and also those who were wanderers, in vaga- bondage, strolling about the streets of the towns and country. There are eighty-six departments in France. In sixty- seven departments, there were, in 1843, one hundred and nineteen public and private establishments for the insane, leaving nineteen departments without any provision within themselves for this purpose. All of these nineteen de- partments sent their lunatics to others, except three which reported no lunatics in any condition belonging to them during these seven years. Only twenty-one departments are reported to have any lunatics at their houses or in private families, leaving sixty-five departments with all of their insane in public or private establishments especially devoted to them, or in prisons, or in vagabondage. Only twenty five departments are reported to have any vagabond lunatics, wandering or strolling abroad, leaving sixty-one departments, all of whose patients of this sort are at their houses, or in other families, or in some insti- tutions for their cure or custody.