Report of the Committee of Visitors of the County Lunatic Asylum, at the Epiphany Sessions, 1870 / [Hants County Lunatic Asylum].

  • Hampshire County Lunatic Asylum
Date:
[1870?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report of the Committee of Visitors of the County Lunatic Asylum, at the Epiphany Sessions, 1870 / [Hants County Lunatic Asylum]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    1C Unions in the County for which the Asylum was original built. But why there should have been so large an increa in the numbers sent from the Unions is not so easij accounted for. I have shown that it does not depend any material degree on the concentration here of previous ■ recognized Pauper Lunatics, yet our Admission Kegister show that a very large proportion of the Patients were wild brought here suffering from disease of long standing, and it I remarked before that the incurable cases are in excef of the curable. How does this happen ? Why the numbe should have been tolerably stationary for a period of 4 yea from 1857, I cannot say, for I can find no clue of any kir to guide me in forming an opinion, but as to the increasl on looking over the causes of insanity as I learn them froj the admission papers and the histories of the Patients as f;L as I can get at them, I find there are certain statement very limited in number, which are constantly recurring to the probable reason of the disease. These are set dow as congenital defect constantly combined with Epilepsy, < Epilepsy producing Dementia and leaving the Patient : the same condition as that of a Congenital Epileptic Idici Such persons, should they live long enough, become j burden which their friends cannot support, or are no longu manageable in a small crowded cottage, or perhaps the. lose their protector. In either case they find their wa sooner or later, into the Asylum. Again there is that condition of mind, the result of o] age, termed fatuity or second childhood, in which 6. people become mischievous and uncontrollable; that t( sends them to the Asylum, and my experience is that thei are a good many prematurely old amongst those who con: under my care.
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