Twenty-first annual report of the trustees of the State Lunatic Hospital at Worcester. December, 1853.

  • State Lunatic Hospital at Worcester
Date:
1854
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Twenty-first annual report of the trustees of the State Lunatic Hospital at Worcester. December, 1853. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    rangements is superior, yet the legislature of New York, with a liberality that refuses to deny any expenditure that may be necessary, to render it more perfect as an instrument for accomplishing the benevolent object of its erection, have authorized an expenditure of $75,000 the past season. Its partitions have been taken down and built up anew, with hot¬ air flues and ventiducts of suitable sizes in them. The amount of tubing employed for conveying the steam to warm it, is one square foot of superficial surface to every fifty cubic feet of space. The proportion employed in the other hospitals men¬ tioned, is from one square foot to fifty, to one square foot to seventy-five cubic feet of space. The Hospital at Utica, in all its appointments, may justly be regarded as a model institution, although its ground plan, in our opinion, is inferior to that of Trenton and Harrisburg* Our Hospital at Worcester has not only ceased to be re¬ garded as a model institution, but it has fallen into the rear rank in the march of improvement. Can the reputation of Massachusetts suffer it to remain there? No definite estimates have been made, of the cost of the proposed improvements. There are about one million cubic feet of space in the whole establishment. In the portion occupied by the patients, not including the centre building, chape], kitchens and laundry, according to a computation of the Superintendent, there are but six hundred thousand cubic feet. One million cubic feet of space, upon the maximum calculation, would require twenty thousand square feet surface of pipe or tubing. This, at sixty cents per foot, would cost $12,000. Boilers, of sufficient size, would cost $5,000 more. Further than this it would be impossible to make esti¬ mates, until some definite plan shall be determined ot). We have presented the wants of the institution for the considera¬ tion of the government, and if it shall be determined that those wants shall be supplied, there will be no difficulty in obtaining plans and estimates. But the better course to pursue, in the opinion of a majority of the Board, is to make only such repairs as may be necessary for occupying it till another institution can be erected to take its place, and that measures be taken immediately, for the pur¬ chase of a suitable site, and the erection thereon ol the neces-