Thirty-first annual report of the Somerset County Pauper Lunatic Asylum : from the first of January to the end of the year 1878.

  • Somerset County Pauper Lunatic Asylum.
Date:
1879
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Thirty-first annual report of the Somerset County Pauper Lunatic Asylum : from the first of January to the end of the year 1878. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    The Animal Report, of course, is not the proper place to enter upon any scientific or metaphysical views of Insanity. It may be interesting, nevertheless, to give even a passing glance to some practical points in connection with so formidable a disease, and certainly the first suggesting itself is the paramount impor¬ tance of dispelling anything like mystery about it. Until this is done very little practical progress can be made. But a further step must be taken in the matter. It is not enough to rest content with the fact that certain numbers of the insane annually recover their reason. There remains equally the fact that some never completely do so, while a very considerable number die insane every year. The field then for further and patient investigation is thus too painfully patent, but for this very reason should systematical]y, and in a scientific manner be explored. If only indeed for “ State ” reasons the facts remain as recorded above, and should be accounted for. The problem for solution therefore is, why do a given number of the population become insane, and die insane, and how far can the disease be prevented or arrested. The “ State ” is too deeply interested in the prosperity and good government of the population to attempt to ignore them. Their existence, in fact, in the general community cannot be ignored, for only at the beginning of the present year the total number of Registered Lunatics, Idiots, and persons of unsound mind in England and Wales, amounted to the alarming figure of 68,538, showing an increase of 1,902 over the number registered on the 1st of January, 1877. The true solvent however of that aversion towards the insane, which unfortunately is still too frequently maintained against them, and which is a stigma as unmerited as it is bigoted, lies in perfect publicity respecting their condition, and in regarding their malady as much a disease as any other, and curable in pro¬ portion if taken in time. In short, there should be the same