Fourth annual report of the Cumberland and Westmorland Lunatic Asylum : 1865.

  • Cumberland and Westmorland Lunatic Asylum
Date:
1866
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Fourth annual report of the Cumberland and Westmorland Lunatic Asylum : 1865. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    acid and lime to the water closets, as recommended by Mr. Mc.Dougal, of Manchester, and carried out by you, will be most successful in preventing all offensive odours in the house, and in enabling us to use the sewage anywhere to the land, with safety and profit. Mr. Todd has contrived an ingenious arrangement for mixing the carbolic acid with the water, which will save much labour, and do it much more effectively than it can be done by hand. When the cast-iron gutters for distributing the sewage over any part of the land are got, the system of deodorization and | utilization will be complete. GENERAL HISTORY OF THE INSTITUTION. In the general history of the institution for the past year, I have to report two accidents, that might very easily have been fatal to the lives of the patients. The first was the case of a man who attempted to cut his throat, in the early part of the year, but only succeeded in dividing the skin. He had not been even suspected of a desire to commit suicide until he made the attempt. The other case was that of a paralytic patient being scalded by an attendant. The act was one of great and inexcusable carelessness, but the cause of death of the patient was not the scald, but a paralytic seizure in the course of the disease under which he laboured. Of course he was weakened by the scald, and made less able to resist any disease, and in that way the scald may have contributed to the patient's death, though I am of opinion that the paralytic seizure of itself would have carried him off, in the state in which he had been for some time. His death took place after the year had ended, so that it is not included among the deaths during 1865. This was the first case in which a coroner's inquest had been held, on the death of any patient, since the opening of the institution. For this rarity of accidents there is every reason to be thankful, considering the risk there is of serious accidents at all times in Asylums. More stringent rules will for the future be enforced in regard to the bathing of patients, although I fear that no rules however explicit they may be, and however stringently enforced, will supply the utter want, of care and common sense of a man who, when he has to wash a patient in tepid water, puts him in scalding hot water. I can only hope that we may succeed in getting attendants to whom rules will not be necessary to make them avoid such accidents. With that
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