Thirty-fourth annual report by the directors of James Murray's Royal Asylum for Lunatics, near Perth. June, 1861.

  • James Murray's Royal Asylum for Lunatics
Date:
1861
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Thirty-fourth annual report by the directors of James Murray's Royal Asylum for Lunatics, near Perth. June, 1861. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Causes. Admissions of Moribund Pa¬ tients. weather is very apparent, however, when we come to' consider the general health of our community during the bye-gone year. All our deaths were fortunately in incurable cases. No less than G Patients who died were upwards of GO years of age at the time of decease, one was 81, and in all of these the decay of senility had much to do with the fatal result. In one case the cause of death was Rupture of the Ileum, with relative fcecal extravasation and Pe¬ ritonitis ; in two acute Tuberculosis; in a third acute typhoid Bron¬ cho-Pneumonia ; in two cases General Paralysis—in one of them there being a complication of acute, typhoid Pneumonia, and in the other chronic and intense spasmodic contraction of almost all the muscles of the body, most marked in those of the face and neck ; and in 4 it was the exhaustion of Mania, acute or chronic, mostly the latter—in one case aggravated by abstinence prior to admission, and in another terminating in a series of severe convulsions. One patient had been 28, and another 26 years aD inmate of the Institu¬ tion ; while one had been admitted only a fortnight, and another only two months, previously—the latter especially having been ad¬ mitted almost in a dying state. Other patients have recently been admitted in a similar semi-moribund condition; and it is by no means unfrequent to find the admissions in the last stages of aneemia, and debility—their constitutions thoroughly undermined, partly emaciation, by the form and duration of their insanity, and partly by the mismanagement of the patient, by unnecessarily permitting abstinence, sleeplessness, exhaustive restlessness, or otherwise. This circumstance is noteworthy in all considerations affecting asylum- mortality or disease. There is again a preponderance of male over female deaths, though this year it is not so marked as usual. Our Table I. [“General Results of the year 1860—1”] shows that of 232 deaths from 1827 up to 1860, 143 were males and 89 females, or Gl*63 per cent, of the former and only 38*37 of the latter : rather more than half. In regard to recoveries, on the other hand, the ratio is reversed, the females preponderating both this year and generally. The same table shows that, of 534 reco¬ veries from 1827 to 1860, 222 were males and 312 females, or 41*57 per cent, of the former, and 58*43 of the latter. Of the whole 1266 patients admitted between 1827 and 1860, the males numbered 625 and the females 641—a difference of 16 in favour of the latter, and one which, from its smallness, is of little account. The pre¬ ponderance of males in the one case, and of females in the other, is, therefore, absolute. Occasionally, though rarely, instead of bringing