The sixty-third report of the visitors of the County Lunatic Asylum, Stafford : for the year ending December 31, 1881.

  • Staffordshire County Lunatic Asylum (Stafford, England)
Date:
[1882]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The sixty-third report of the visitors of the County Lunatic Asylum, Stafford : for the year ending December 31, 1881. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    the very large proportion of sufferers from Genera] Paralysis, to which disease 25 per cent, of the deaths have been due. Of the 115 deaths since the Commissioners' last visit, 28 were from General Paralysis, 15 from Epilepsy, 12 from exhaustion after mania and melancholia, 22 from consumption and other forms of lung disease, 8 from heart disease, and 15 from senile decay. Post Mortem examinations have been made in 19 only of the deaths. There has been no fatal casualty, and no Coroner's inquest has been held. The present number of General Paralytic patients is 23 (19 males and 4 females), the Epileptic are 147 (67 men and 80 women), and those reported to be actively suicidal are 15 males and 12 females; we found 3 men and 2 women only in bed; no one in the Asylum was under medical restraint or in seclusion. Since our colleagues' visit, 3 men have been restrained by having their arms fastened, and three other men have worn locked gloves. In all these 6 cases the treatment was for surgical reasons, or to prevent the patient tearing open a wound of the throat self-inflicted before admission. In the case of one man, the restraint was found necessary at intervals for many weeks. Under the heading of restraint in the Medical Journal, we find record of 3 patients of each sex having been “ dry packed for maniacal excitement, the men for an aggregate of 24, the women for a total period of 20 hours. No patient, we are informed, is ever “ dry packed here continuously for longer than six hours. Seclusion appears to have been resorted to with 19 men, on 105 occasions, for a total duration of 1168 hours, and in the cases of 17 women, on 62 occasions, for a total of 748 hours. In one woman's case the seclusion was chiefly at her own request. The patients last registered as being under medical treatment, viz. this week, are 11 males and 24 females, of whom 2 of the former and 11 of the latter are taking