Fifty-ninth annual report of the directors of the Dundee Royal Asylum for Lunatics : submitted, in terms of their charter, to a general meeting of the directors, 16th June, 1879 with the reports of the resident physician and treasurer of the institution.

  • Dundee Royal Asylum for Lunatics.
Date:
1879
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Fifty-ninth annual report of the directors of the Dundee Royal Asylum for Lunatics : submitted, in terms of their charter, to a general meeting of the directors, 16th June, 1879 with the reports of the resident physician and treasurer of the institution. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    were male private patients, 29 female private patients, 142 pauper males, and 250 female pauper patients. Of the patients admitted during the past year, 27 had on some previous occasion been under treatment in the Asylum, —in some instances more than once. On the other hand, the intervals between the attacks were of long duration, in one case extending to 12, in another to 25 years. Several were well advanced in years when brought to the Institution, the respective ages of 12 being 60, 60, 61, 61, 63, 64, 66, 66, 73, 74, 77, and 79 years. Of the patients discharged recovered, 6 had been under treatment for periods not exceeding three months; 11 under six months; 13 under nine months; 2 under one year; 5 under two years; and 1 for fully two years. Of those removed not recovered, 21 were transferred to the Lunatic Wards of Poorhouses, making a total of 291 who have thus left the Asylum since the opening of these Wards in December 1864. The obituary register contains 28 entries, referring to 14 male and 14 female patients. In 6 cases death resulted from paralysis; in 3 from general paralysis; in 3 from phthisis; in 3 from epilepsy; in 3 from senile decay; in 3 from heart disease; in two from exhaustion; and in one case each from phthisis and paralysis, purpura, chronic enteritis, cardiac dropsy, and bronchitis. The average age at death was 54'641 years. In three cases the ages at death were 66 years; and in five, 70, 72, 78, 81, and 89 respectively. In 13 instances the patients had been resident for various periods not exceeding 12 months duration, being either affected with advanced paralysis, or otherwise in a more or less moribund state on ad- ■ mission. One patient, however, had been an inmate of the Institution for the period of 45 years, having been received on |] 8 May 1834. A male patient who had long suffered from confirmed epi- • lepsy was found dead in bed. A Report of all the circum- • stances connected with the case was duly sent to the Procurator- ■ Fiscal, but, as no reasonable doubt existed as to the cause of I