Third report of the Derbyshire County Pauper Lunatic Asylum.

  • Derbyshire County Pauper Lunatic Asylum.
Date:
[1855]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Third report of the Derbyshire County Pauper Lunatic Asylum. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    15/34 (page 11)
    other beneficent changes, we are indebted to the zeal and humanity of the Commissioners in Lunacy. In referring to the Medical Certificates, it may not be wrong to ] state, that a large amount of correspondence has been entailed upon the Superintendent during the past year, in consequence of the very iiinaccurate manner in which these documents have been filled up. i:It is quite a rare thing to receive a correct certificate even from ] parties to whom their previous errors had been pointed out and r explained. A collection of those blunders would occupy much >jspace, but it would be curious, as illustrating the vast number of imistakes it is possible to make in a legal document of only a few 3 lines in extent. It is not honorable to the medical profession that ii these things should exist: whatever is worth doing at all, is worth doing well, and carelessness ought never to be evinced in a docu- iment which determines the freedom or detention of a fellow-creature, |and upon the accuracy of which many other grave consequences rjmay depend. Your Physician takes this opportunity of appealing (Ito his brother practitioners, in order that they might display less lihaste in the composition of such documents, for he is convinced that [fin this, as in other high duties which they perform so well, they will i act skilfully when they know that upon the due construction of the tlCertificate are dependant the immediate admission of a Patient, W(perhaps too weak to make a second journey), the legal safety of \nthemselves, as well as of the Resident Physician, who is liable to r|lieavy penalties by admitting any person into the Asylum upon bjinaccurate or defective certificates. Occupation has been carried out as heretofore, with as much ifisnergy as is compatible with the well-doing of the Patient. The imple farm and garden, by their never-ceasing requirements, furnish in abundance of employment to all who are capable of out-door Exercise. Nine acres of wheat, four acres of beans, and three of Dats, have been reaped and harvested, and one thousand and fifty [{bushels of potatoes, and six tons of parsnips and carrots, have been dug and garnered up by their labours during the past autumn, in [ addition to many other crops of lesser importance. The condition Mediical Certificates. Occupation.