The report of the Committee of Visitors and Medical Superintendent of the Devon County Lunatic Asylum.

  • Devon County Lunatic Asylum
Date:
[1858?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The report of the Committee of Visitors and Medical Superintendent of the Devon County Lunatic Asylum. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    8/18 (page 8)
    patients. Various expedients may be, and in this asylum have been resorted to, for the relief of the over-crowded wards. When arrangements could be made, and the form of insanity justified the risk, some chronic patients have been sent to reside with their friends ; some few others have been placed to live with cottagers, in the neighbourhood of the asylum ; and above all, relief to the wards has been provided by the temporary Branch Asylum, which was established at Exmouth. In default of sufficient asylum accommodation, there are certainly, great difficulties in providing expedients for tlie care and treat¬ ment even of chronic patients, selected as the most tranquil and easily manageable ; but it can scarcely admit of doubt, that it is better for the visitors of an asylum to incur the responsibility of providing such expedients than to close their wmrds against the admission of new cases. The selection of chronic patients, for the trial by the visitors of any reasonable modifications of care and treatment, can be made with full knowledge of the peculiarities of the patients ; but the refusal to admit new patients, must be made in ignorance of the urgency of their need for care and treatment. When insanity has rendered a person no longer master of his actions, care and treatment of some kind or other become an absolute necessity; and that it should be provided for chronic patients by their legal guardians, who are thoroughly acquainted with their requirements, is so far preferable to any arrangement, under which the care and treatment of new and difficult cases is liable to be imposed upon persons who have no practical knowledge, and no legal authority to direct them, that it appears a subject of regret that the Asylums Act should empower the Visitors to close the county asylums. It would have been far better to have given the Visitors the fullest power to dispose, according to their discretion, of chronic cases, pending the provision of additional accommodation. For this purpose they should be empowered to rent or to lease suitable buildings upon any terms which may be approvod by their judgment. The require¬ ment of the Asylum Act, [sec. 33] that a lease of building's for the use of an asylum shall be “ for an absolute term of not less than sixty years ” ought to be repealed. It has been a source of great satisfaction to find that the parochial