The report of the committee of visitors, superintendent and chaplain of the Cheshire Lunatic Asylum : together with the annual statement of accounts, made to the court of general quarter sessions of the peace, holden at Nether Knutsford, in and for the county of Chester, on Monday, April 12th, 1869.

  • Cheshire County Lunatic Asylum
Date:
1869
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The report of the committee of visitors, superintendent and chaplain of the Cheshire Lunatic Asylum : together with the annual statement of accounts, made to the court of general quarter sessions of the peace, holden at Nether Knutsford, in and for the county of Chester, on Monday, April 12th, 1869. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    16/50 page 16
    ______-^^-1 16 CHESTER COUNTY ASYLUM. i i j accelerated tlieir death, put the house to a large expenditure for |- stimulants and a considerable amount of nursing, thereby adding ton our bills of mortality. 8 died within four days, and 1) under one!, month after admission. The per centage of recoveries (46’5) as compared with the admissions, was much larger than in any of the past years. 40 ofi^' the recoveries occurred in patients who had been resident in the*= Asylum under one year, 9 who had been from five to ten years, and 1.^ for the long period of thirt}^ years. These latter cases are sufficientji to prove tliat the Chronic forms of the malady are not of necessity incurable. I feel it to be my painful duty to state that a certain Ptelieving Officer presented himself in an unfit condition to take a dischargedr female home. I need hardly say that I did not put her under his care.;: A caution is therefore needed that discharged patients—femalesr especially—should not be subjected to any annoyance on their wayj] home. It is also very desirable that patients should be sent for as early as convenient in the day, and that the Ptelieving Officer bei' always accompanied by a female when the patient is of that sex. There was an increase in the per centage of deaths, and, as usual,il the cause has, in more than one-third of the cases, been due toi i General Paralysis, many of the patients having been admitted ini the last stage of the disease. This and the large number of casesf admitted year by year in a weakly or bad state of health, as ai necessary sequence, increase the death-rates more in one year thanj in another. ^ f The deaths were chiefly among the Chonic cases, and thosej^ enfeebled by age, and only 2 were from an unusual cause ; and li am spared the painful duty of recording a suicide. | In four instances, inquests were held, the verdicts of the Jury iot two of the cases being, “ Died from Natural Causes and those ofe tlie other two, “Died from Accidental Suffocation;” the one byf falling out of bed on Ijis face in a fit, the other (a patient in the last stage of General Paralysis) by being choked by a piece of food nettiim into the Tracliea.
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3