Fifth report of the Somerset County Asylum, for insane paupers : from 1st January to the end of the year 1852.

  • Tone Vale Hospital
Date:
1853
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Fifth report of the Somerset County Asylum, for insane paupers : from 1st January to the end of the year 1852. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    the removal, when death may be expected soon to ensue; and it is unjust to the Medical Officers of your Asylum to swell the numbers of deaths by the transmission of patients, of whose recovery in many instances so little hope can have existed. It has been stated to your Committee that this has in some instances arisen from ignorance of the mode of procedure on the part of those whose duty it is to see that pauper lunatics are sent to your Asylum, and a request has been made that some information should be given on this point in their Report. The Lunatic Act renders it imperative that the Medical Officer of any Union, under a penalty of ten pounds for neglect of such duty, shall give notice, in writing, within three days after he has obtained knowledge of the case, to the Relieving Officer, of any person, chargeable to any parish within such Union, whom he deems to be lunatic; and the Relieving Officer, under a like penalty for his neglect, must within three days after his receiving such notice, give notice of it to some 5ustice who, by his order, will require the Relieving Officer to bring the lunatic before him or some other Justice, that he may with the assistance of some medical man, not a medical man of the Union, satisfy himself of the state of the reported lunatic, under the Act as directed by the 48th section of the 8 & 9 Yict. C. 126. The 49th section points out the mode of dealing with wandering lunatics and those not chargeable to any parish, but it is not necessary to enter into that here. Where the lunatic cannot be taken before a Magistrate, the officiating Clergyman of the parish may examine him and act instead. It is, however, obvious that all persons deemed lunatics are not by the legislature intended to be sent to County Lunatic Asylums. Among the 610 report¬ ed as such in this County by the Commissioners in Lunacy in 1847, many are Idiots, and some labouring under abberration of mind, but harmless, and safely kept and well attended to at home; and to many such it might be an aggravation rather than an alleviation
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