Nineteenth annual report of the county and city of Worcester Pauper Lunatic Asylum.

  • Worcester Pauper Lunatic Asylum
Date:
1872
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Nineteenth annual report of the county and city of Worcester Pauper Lunatic Asylum. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    61/74 (page 59)
    there is one cittenclaiit for every six or sevGH of the inmates. Ecjual advantages result under this system in respect of the clothing, bedding, and food required by these various classes. In the hospital wards, for instance, stimulants, concentrated articles of nourishment, and various diversities of food, are absolutely essential for the proper treatment of the patients, as they could not assi¬ milate the ordinary diet of the Asylum, and in these wards it is only partially supplied to them. In other wards, again, feAV or no extras of any kind are distributed. In wards where the patients are destructive, and their habits both by day and night objectionable, special provision is made to secure their warmth by stronger and more dura¬ ble clothing, and their bedding is arranged in like manner to prevent its destruction and frequent renewal from day to day. From the above statement it will be evident that the curable patients admitted into and resident in your Asy¬ lum are much better circumstanced, cared for, and pro¬ tected, by being mixed with the chronic cases of the class to which they most closely assimilate. Thus, if all your patients who were supposed to be curable were sent to the same wuird on their admission and retained therein, there would be found to be present constantly antagonistic influ¬ ences to the progress of their recovery. The dangerous and violent, noisy and dirty, would live by day, and sleep in close proximity to the quiet, reserved, and timid. Terror instead of confidence would be aroused in their minds, and every remaining particle of such as possessed any intelligence would be excited and roused to escape from such a state of confusion and contamination. Dis¬ similar elements of mental disease are frequently in small proportion introduced into another class than that to which they would naturally appear to belong, but in these instances it is done for the purpose of forcing these per¬ sons who possess, but will not exercise, that amount of self-will and control over their acts and thoughts, so as to ])ring them into an improved state, and accordingly we generally find that the attrition of superior intelligence and the quiet force of example on the part of the others, gradually induces a decided subsidence of their irregular and objectionable habits, as also in respect of the morbid trains of their thoughts. 644 patients, of whom 265 were males and 379 females, were left under care at the beginning of the year. The cudmissions during its course were 175, of whom 107 were