Eighteenth annual report of the Trustees of the State Lunatic Hospital at Northampton : October, 1873.

  • State Lunatic Hospital (Northampton, Mass.)
Date:
1874
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Eighteenth annual report of the Trustees of the State Lunatic Hospital at Northampton : October, 1873. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    In the preparation of these periodical reports to your hon¬ orable board, it appears almost a matter of necessity, annu¬ ally, to throw in a reminder of the specially incurable character of a large proportion of the patients received at this hospital. When the Superintendents of the two similar state institu¬ tions at Worcester and Taunton have exhausted, without avail, the resources of their well-known skill in the treatment of a part of their patients, they considerately transmit them, by the kind assistance of the Board of State Charities, to us. As has already been shown, we have received no less than seventy-seven of these delicately complimentary evidences of their confidence, during the lapse of the official year just gone to its long repose. How grateful soever it may be our duty under the circumstances to feel, we cannot fail to perceive ’ the necessary effect of the proceeding in the reduction of the • proportion of curable cases, and consequently that of recov¬ eries. However nearly perfect this hospital may be made in its curative means and appliances, it must inevitably retain, to a certain extent, the character of a refuge or asylum for incurables, until the population of the western counties shall become sufficient to keep it fully occupied, and the State shall be so amply provided with these institutions as to overcome the necessity of transfers of patients from one to another of them. Of the twenty-one persons whose disease terminated fatally, eleven were supported by the State, five by towns, and five by individuals. Again we are able to report a year not alone of remarkable general physical health and exemption from acute disease, but also of a very small ratio of mortality. The proportion of deaths, whether compared with the whole number of cases under treatment, or with the daily average number in the house, is not only largely below that of the mean death-rate for the fifteen years of the operations of the hospital, but materially below that of any antecedent year. The annals of the mortality of the institution, during the whole period of its existence, are collected in this table :—
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