Medical report to the managers of the Lunatic Asylum of Aberdeen for the year ending 30th April, 1846 : read at the general meeting held in the asylum, 30th June, 1846.

  • Lunatic Asylum of Aberdeen (Aberdeen, Scotland)
Date:
1846
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Medical report to the managers of the Lunatic Asylum of Aberdeen for the year ending 30th April, 1846 : read at the general meeting held in the asylum, 30th June, 1846. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    according to the peculiar circumstances of each case, a certain probationary period being deemed necessary in all. The third column is the onlj^^ one to which these remarks do not apply, and accordingly we find, from the relative frequency of deaths during the Winter months, what a direct influence climate and tempera¬ ture have had on the mortality of the Institution. This subject, which forms an interesting branch of medical statistics, would require, for its elucidation, that a retrospective Table, similar in plan to the one in question, should be framed, by selecting those cases only in which the duration of the malady is accurately known, and that it should be made to extend over a considerable number of years. The next Table (Table XII.) exhibits the comparative results of the last seven years, and is intended to be supplementary to a similar Table, published in the Report for the year 1840-41, which extends over a period of eleven years immediately preceding. On comparing the two, it will be seen that the numbers treated in the Institution have been greatly on the increase during the pe¬ riod included in them. It has been already observed, that hereditary predisposition ex¬ isted in fully one-half of the cases admitted, and it is interesting, in connection with this fact, to find that in no fewer than six instances, near relatives have been at the same time inmates of the Asylum, in the course of the past year, the nature of the re¬ lationship in each case forming the subject of Table XIII. No more striking proof could be adduced of the strong tendency of this class of maladies to run in families, and of the consequent im¬ portance, in those unfortunate cases where hereditary taint is suspected, of avoiding every thing that may act as an exciting- cause in bringing on the attack. This end can be effectually at¬ tained only by a carefully directed education, and by securing the mind, from infancy, by strict habits of self-controul, against the dis¬ turbing influence of the passions, no less than by guarding against more obvious and direct causes, such as irregularities in living, and over-exertion of the mind in study. In alluding to Table XIV., which is an enumeration of the Newspapers and Literary Periodicals that have been taken in during the year, and which have been the source of much rational
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