Seventy-ninth annual report of the Royal Edinburgh Asylum for the insane. 1891.

  • Royal Edinburgh Asylum
Date:
[1892]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Seventy-ninth annual report of the Royal Edinburgh Asylum for the insane. 1891. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    6/76 page 12
    13 The good of boarding out. Suitable cases out of Asylum growing in num¬ ber. can be no doubt that but for the boarding out of quiet and incu¬ rable cases by the two Edinburgh parishes, we should long ago have been so overcrowded by chronic cases that we should have, been unable to admit all the new cases from our district. This year 24 such cases were boarded out, and 8 more were sent to the lunatic wards of the Poorhouses. The number of pauper lunatics of our district not in the Asylum was about 70 more at the end of the year than it was at the beginning. In 1881 St Cuthbert’s parish had only 26 cases boarded out; now it has 258. Alto¬ gether there are about 350 cases boarded out from our district. Whatever other advantages this method of caring for the chronic L.50,000 saved to ratepayers In¬ judicious board¬ ing out. The brain wrecks sent to us more than ever. Our mean age goes up. The sick unto death increase. Why? “ Insanity ” covers more ground. Helpless old people mustn’t be neglected. harmless insane, who are paid for out of the rates, has, it undeniably has this economical result, that no capital is sunk in providing Asylum accommodation for them. In this way something like L. 50,000 has been saved to the ratepayers of Edinburgh. The tendency I have often remarked on of late years to send older and weaker patients here as pauper lunatics, who suffer from the breakdown of old age, from paralysis, and from organic brain disease with mental disturbances, still goes on. The mean age of the paupers admitted, that of those left resident at the end of each year, and that of those who died, has risen steadily on the average of my first five years here 1873-77 ; so that those average ages are two years more this year than they were then, while on the other hand the mean age of those discharged recovered has remained precisely the same. The number of patients found on admission to be in bad health and exhausted condition has steadily risen from the average of 29 a year in the five years 1875-79 to 39 from 1880-84, to 43 from 1885-89, to 50 in 1890, and to 92 for 1891. Those on the brink of death on admission have thus more than trebled in 17 years. As we shall see, this results directly in a lowered recovery-rate, and in a greatly increased mortality especially during the first few months’ residence. There are many causes to account for this. The area of what is ac¬ counted certifiable insanity is steadily widening into what was accounted mere senility and paralysis at one time. As the public sentiment will not now allow even the harmless insane to wander about uncared for, so it is coming to insist that noisy troublesome dotage shall also not be neglected. Then it is getting to be better
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3