Eightieth annual report of the Royal Edinburgh Asylum for the insane. 1892.

  • Royal Edinburgh Asylum
Date:
[1893]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Eightieth annual report of the Royal Edinburgh Asylum for the insane. 1892. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    natics increased ? most troublesome dotard or paralytic can resist trying to get such An irresistible a person into a good Asylum, where he will be well cared for with- AndPaatrue’phi- out cost to his relatives'! Typical insanity is not the only disease lanthropy* in which the mental powers become affected. There is a crucial test of the question, which Mr Corbet does not apply. Taking a crucial test of the insane who are well off, and of course paid for out of their sition.1 e 8 P° own or their relatives’ money—have they increased in number in proportion to the population! If there has been a general in¬ crease of insanity, the rich as well as the poor will certainly have Have rich lu- been affected by it. In England the private patients have not increased in proportion to the population at all in the past fourteen no. years, and very little indeed in the last thirty-four years, though the proportion of well off people has enormously increased in this country in that time. In Scotland the number of the self-sup¬ porting insane lunatics stands in almost the same ratio to the po¬ pulation that they did in 1876. If insanity as a disease is increasing, why should its increase be confined to those who get treated at the public expense! In my opinion this one fact should make us look out for other causes of the great increase of the pauper insane, than a greater liability to insanity on the part insanity not of the community. Were the present popular dread of Asylums increasm£* and the misconceptions about them removed, so that people looked on them as they do on the Royal Infirmary, I believe the apparent number of the insane would still further and faster increase. The daft fo]k not There are still plenty of people mentally affected in the world side^et?™1”^ who are not in Asylums. Looking to our own statistics of the year, the increase in num¬ bers does not appear to be explained fully by the special preva¬ lence of any one cause or form of mental malady. Ninety-three No forms of in - *111 , . - sanity specially cases, or 21 per cent, or the whole were said to be due to drink- prevalent, ing, but then we had 26 per cent, of our admissions alcoholic last Another drunk- year. Sixteen and a half per cent, had been our annual propor¬ tion during the previous fifteen years. Influenza alone, that influenzie in- latter-day plague, stands out unprecedentedly among the assigned samtJ' causes of the malady. It was put down as having caused 24 cases against 10 the previous year. That subtile malady undoubtedly leaves seeds of weakness in the brain, as it does in every other organ of the body, that in a few cases develop into mental disease.
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