The report of the Committee of Visitors and Medical Superintendent of the Devon County Lunatic Asylum.

  • Devon County Lunatic Asylum
Date:
1862
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The report of the Committee of Visitors and Medical Superintendent of the Devon County Lunatic Asylum. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    quently leaves the mind^act; but, in a certain number of cases, it is followed by dementia, with or without delusion ; after an interval, the patient gradually sinks from exhaustion of the vital powers, with symptoms requiring some accuracy of observation to distinguish from those of general paralysis. Two patients died from maniacal exhaustion, who were admitted in a state affording no hopes of any other result ; and these cases, therefore, ought scarcely to be counted as forming part of the mortality of the inmqto 0f the institution. Gradual and senile decay are classdU^Hbther as a cause of mortality, for, although in several of the cases, the cause of death was, undoubtedly the -exhaustion of the vital functions which attends^tefreme age ; in others, the symptoms of ebbing life of a precisely similar character, although the patient had not numbered the tale of years allotted to the life of man; in these cases, the insanity after manifesting itself in an organization radically feeble, has been attended by a premature decay of the whole nervous system, and the patient dies of old age, in what to others would be middle life. This fact is illustrated by the rare occurrence of long ]ife in idiots, and an instance is afforded in the present obituary, of an idiot, who died at the age of thirty-five, not only a worn-out old man, but with that peculiar affection of the aged, dry gangrene of the feet; an occurrence, which, I believe, is not rare in these imperfect beings at an age when man is not considered to have passed the meridian of life. During the year, two married women, pregnant before ad¬ mission, have given birth to healthy children within the walls ; in one instance the mother would take no notice of the child, and it was, therefore, sent to its parish ; in the other instance, the mother is devotedly attached to her infant ; she calls it the Saviour of the world, and nurses it with assiduous care, and there is no other object of such hea»y interest to many of the insane women, as this little na^e of the wards. , The new building which has been provided for the use of 50 male patients is admirably adapted for its purpose, being inexpensive in construction, cheerful and homelike, and as little as possible calculated to impress the men who dwell therein with the idea that they are in confinement, or under any restraint. Its occupation has for the present relieved the over¬ crowded state of the men’s wards, and it has enabled the South Cottage to be given up to the occupation of 30 women, and by this means has also given present relief to the crowded state of the women’s wards. This use, however, of a part of the