One Hundred and first annual report of the Royal Edinburgh Asylum, Morningside : Craig House and the West House mental hospitals for the year 1913.

  • Royal Edinburgh Asylum
Date:
[1914]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: One Hundred and first annual report of the Royal Edinburgh Asylum, Morningside : Craig House and the West House mental hospitals for the year 1913. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    than cover the cases to be attributed to it. In this group of defectives the disease is, of course, an innocently acquired infection, and for their sakes, if not for the sake of all sufferers, it is hoped that adequate measures will be recommended by the Koyal Commission, as has been done for other infectious diseases. The Mental Deficiency Act will be most useful and is much needed ; but, pressing as the proper care of defectives is, prevention is still more important, and I feel certain before very long steps will be initiated by which in the end this disease will be abolished from the land. When this is done, some of the most fatal forms of preventible insanity, and a large percentage of cases of mental deficiency will cease to occur. The Insanities of the Early, Middle, and Later Periods of Life. It is important to note that these four causes of insanity which have been mentioned operate at different age periods. Insanity in which the hereditary factor is most prominent usually develops during adolescence and early adult life, and almost always appears before the age of 35. Insanity which is mainly the result of senile or premature decadence develops after 55 years of age, and is most marked after 65. The other two preventible factors mentioned operate during the middle period of life, and it is at this time also that the pressure of modern civilisation and the struggle for existence make most demands upon the nervous system. The first period is that of the hereditary insanities, and the last that of the insanities of decay. The middle period is that of the acquired insanities, and it is important for this reason, that measures taken for the prevention of insanity are then most likely to prove successful. One half of the insanity that occurs in men between the ages of 35 and 55 is largely preventible, and is mainly due to the two causes which have been mentioned, and from the report of the last census it appears that insanity at this period is becoming less frequent. The Discharges. Fifty-nine patients were discharged as recovered, and 81 as unrecovered. The recovery rate was thus 25 per cent, of the total number of admissions. In the previous year it was only
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