Annual medical report of the Kent County Lunatic Asylum, at Barming Heath, Maidstone, for the year 1853-4, ending July 4th : presented to the Committee of Visitors, September 9, 1854 and to the Court of General Sessions, October 1854.

  • Kent County Lunatic Asylum
Date:
1854
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Annual medical report of the Kent County Lunatic Asylum, at Barming Heath, Maidstone, for the year 1853-4, ending July 4th : presented to the Committee of Visitors, September 9, 1854 and to the Court of General Sessions, October 1854. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Asylum, exhibited such a tendency and by what acts, and whether, in your opinion, any and what objections existed to placing her to sleep in an associated dormitory. “ I am, &c., “ R. W. S. LUTYVTDGE. “ Dr. Huxley, Superintendent, Kent Asylum.” [No. 4.] “ The Kent County Lunatic Asvlum, “ August 30, 1853. “ Sir,—-I beg to acknowledge your letter dated August 27th with reference to the case of M. B., a patient who committed suicide in this Asylum on the 12th inst.; asking in what way she was dan¬ gerous to others, as represented in the statement to her order of admission; whether she had shown a disposition to injure others, during her residence in this Asylum, and, if so, by what means; and whether, in my opinion, there was any objection to putting her to sleep in an associated dormitory. And I have to inform you, in reply, that about a week previous to her admission, she had taken up a poker and run after her daughter (12 years of age) with the intention, as was supposed, of injuring her. That, during her short residence of 12 days in the Asylum, she displayed no disposition whatever to injure any other person. That, in my opinion, it would have been objectionable to let her sleep in an associated dormitory, until longer residence and a better knowledge of her disposition to violence, as displayed towards her daughter, might have given to that step a greater appearance of safety. Had she lived, and her apparently inoffen¬ sive disposition remained the same, she would shortly have been transferred to a dormitory of six beds in her ward. “ It may be worth mentioning that when M. B was admitted, the answer given to my question, and written down by me at the time, as to whether she had ever attempted suicide was, ‘ No.’ The answer to the question in the statement, therefore, was conjectural as to her disposition to suicide. She was further represented to be liable to change, ‘ from calmness to rage, for a short time.' “it is my practice to place suicidal patients to sleep in rooms with other patients; but not in the cases of new admissions, lest an¬ other propensity, of which we may have no knowledge, should lead to a kind of accident which would, then, be very deserving of blame, and more deplorable than suicide. I may remark that the presence of other patients will not prevent the attempt at, though it may lead to the timely discovery and prevention of suicide; and 1 could mention several instances, not to be doubted as real attempts, which