Second report of the Committee of Visitors of the County of Warwick Pauper Lunatic Asylum : 1858.

  • County of Warwick Pauper Lunatic Asylum.
Date:
[1859?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Second report of the Committee of Visitors of the County of Warwick Pauper Lunatic Asylum : 1858. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    cognizance of its relieving officers; and the humanity, as well as eco¬ nomy, of this course, is evinced by the results of treatment in the past year: the recoveries were in the proportion of 62^ per cent, to the: admissions. The total number of discharges during the year has been 45, of which 38 were cases of recovery, and 7 of improvement. The deaths have been 37—a proportion larger than that of last; year—being 9-| per cent, on the number of patients under treatment,, and 12| per cent, of the daily average resident. But, with a higher mortality, there has been no increase of general sickness among the patients; nor has the Asylum in any part of the year been unhealthy. On the contrary, at periods, when fever, diarrhoea, and other diseases, indicating general deterioration of health, were prevalent in the sur¬ rounding rural districts, and in the town of Warwick, the patients here enjoyed an almost complete immunity from them. Tever has been unknown here ; and it is a satisfactory indication of the general good standard of health that but few patients were affected with diarrhoea, and that of a mild form, when it was very prevalent in the neigh¬ bourhood, and the sane portion of our Asylum population was re¬ quiring a considerable amount of medical care for severer forms of the complaint. Much the larger proportion of the mortality has been consequent on old age, general decay, and diseases of the brain and nervous system—the result of destruction or disorganisation of the structures, that our present medical knowledge is not able to arrest. To this latter form of disease men are, from various causes, much more liable than women; and, from its fatal nature, the mortality among males in Asylums is greater than that among females. These graver cerebral complications influence in a similar manner the proportion of reco¬ veries in the two sexes, which is decidedly smaller among males than among females. The disproportion in this Asylum in the past year is very marked; for, whilst among the females the recoveries bear to the admissions a proportion of 53 per cent., among the males they amount to only 25-| per cent. Of the 300 patients in the Asylum, on the 31st of December, 1858, 17 were of the private class, and 283 paupers; of these latter 10 are confined under a Secretary of State’s warrant, 7 are chargeable to the county, and 16, since removed, were maintained under contract from the County of Gloucester Asylum. Two accidents occurred during the year, both somewhat serious at the time, but terminating favourably. A woman, more than 80