Report on the Royal Lunatic Asylum of Montrose for 1865 : instituted 1782.

  • Royal Lunatic Asylum, Infirmary, and Dispensary of Montrose
Date:
1865
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report on the Royal Lunatic Asylum of Montrose for 1865 : instituted 1782. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    In accordance with a practice I adopted two years since, a careful examination has been made of patients on admission, with the view of ascertaining as nearly as possible, the exact condition of the various organs of the body. It is not of course pretended that the result of these examinations is absolutely correct, and much, no doubt, has escaped observation; but of the 90 patients admitted during the year, 25 were ascertained to be labouring under some physical disease, six had paralysis, 3 epilepsy, and 9 phthisis. Two women were in a state of pregnancy, one of whom laboured under albuminuria, and present¬ ed those curious delusions of mistaken identity to which I have alluded in former reports, as frequent accompaniments of the mania of pregnant females. Two patients were admitted wdiose names could not be satisfact¬ orily ascertained. The first wTas an Irish sailor lad, who was found wandering in a state of insanity in one of our northern seaports. When asked his name, he seldom twice in succession gave the same one. The inspector and certifying medical men made a choice of one, and the Sheriff granted an order for his removal to the Asylum, w'here, however, after his partial recovery, it was found that he was detained under a wrong designation. The other was also a wanderer, found in a neighbouring parish. In the medical certific¬ ate he was designated as “a person unknownhe either -could not or would not tell his name. I did not feel myself justified in receiving him without some more definite appellation. The police constable wTho had been in charge of him had heard him use one name in par¬ ticular as of a third party, and this we agreed to enter on chance on the schedule as his own. It turned out to be the correct one, and the difficulty in getting it at first was no doubt in a measure owing to the fact that he was a foreigner, and could neither speak nor under¬ stand English very well. One patient was, after a short detention, dismissed, as feigning insanity. In some cases of organic brain disease, curious mental conditions have been observed. One man wdio showed a tolerably rational sequence of ideas in conversation, could not tell the relationship between himself and his sister’s father, and though he could go over the names of all his children, he could not tell the number of them. A man who, besides labouring under brain disease, was stone blind, fancied that he could see, and employed himself mainly in picking imaginary vermin off his body—declaring that he felt them coming out of his flesh, and that his brain was full of them. At certain periods of excitement, new fancies would take
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