Twenty-eighth annual report of the Suffolk Lunatic Asylum : December, 1865.

  • Suffolk Lunatic Asylum.
Date:
[1866]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Twenty-eighth annual report of the Suffolk Lunatic Asylum : December, 1865. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    But as it is, while strong wide causes urge toward increased mental disturbance; and even an increased intensity Or untractableness of it, in individual cases: every case of cure must have a greater representative value; and every case of chronic hopelessness must also bear its argu¬ ment to the necessity of plentiful asylum provision, in its quiet seclusion, and in its physical and moral regimen. All merely numerical statistics drawn from the variable tables of asylums, afford a very inadequate criterion of the success or non-success of particular treatment. There is much truth covered by the humour of Mr. Canning’s expression that “figures are as false as facts” and certainly on medical calculations (no less than on financial) they are generally delusive, taken as they are in ignorance of those qualifying circumstances which shew the advantages or otherwise that patients may possess, and necessarily in¬ fluencing the results of their treatment. The very names eof the varieties of insanity present to the view of the old practitioner something of a fanciful appearance. “ Thin partitions do their bounds divide,” and some of these are so very thin it may be noticed of them, that though extremes differ much, and intermediates considerably, shades of differ¬ ence can scarcely be distinguished as submitting to correct nomenclature. Some inconvenience has risen of late from the reception of some patients, not paupers, who have been sent under the 68th clause of 16 and 17, Yic. In the report of the Commissioners in Lunacy for 1864, p. 82, special reference is made to the latitude used in the interpretation of this clause, as stated by Mr. Archbold to be of doubtful con¬ struction. The Commissioners remark upon it, “ under the general powers of discharge given by the 79th section of the Act, the visitors have no doubt full authority to order such patients sent to the Asylum in these circumstances, to be discharged.”