Third annual report of the Inverness District Lunatic Asylum : May 1867.

  • Inverness District Lunatic Asylum.
Date:
1867
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Third annual report of the Inverness District Lunatic Asylum : May 1867. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    8/36 (page 8)
    viding a general workroom, in which their various occupations could be pursued; under superintendents who could devote their whole attention to the object in view. The apartments were perfectly clean, well arranged, and the bed-clothes and day-dress of the patients satisfactory. The hair of both sexes is, however, allowed to grow too luxuriantly, and can¬ not be thoroughly cleaned. The dinner was attended by 107 men and 76 women. The meal was served in an orderly manner, and great decorum prevailed, as indeed it did in all parts of the house; but the room appeared crowded, and there was a little confusion while the patients were passing to their respective galleries. This might be remedied by making a selection of those permitted to meet in the public hall, and by arranging that the patients should enter and go out in the order of the tables at which they sit. There are at present resident, 127 men and 110 women; of whom only 12 are deemed curable. There is no one absent on probation. The admissions since 20th July 1866 amount to 45, of which 39 were pauper cases, all belonging to the district. Thir¬ teen persons have been discharged; twelve of them as recovered. Eighteen deaths have taken place. All the deceased were paupers. The average age at death appears to have been 49 years. With the exception of the fracture of a rib received in a fall during an attack of epilepsy, the accidents have been of the most trivial nature. It should be noted here that in the summer and autumn of 1866 an epidemic fever appeared in the Asylum, during which 29 patients and six attendants were attacked, and three of the former died. A special report was made at the time bjT Commissioner Browne and Deputy-Commissioner Mitchell, and various sugges¬ tions made as to isolation, the state of the reservoir and piggeries, which have been to a certain extent carried into effect. It is worthy of remark, that after deducting the three deaths from fever and two attributed to exhaustion, which may be the termination of any disease, more than one-half (7) of the deaths are due to affections of the pulmonary organs. The temperature throughout the house was, during the visit, extremely low. At certain points it could not have exceeded that of the external air; and, generally, the sensations conveyed were those of pain or discomfort. This was partly the result of having