The Middlesex County Lunatic Asylums, and their reports for 1855 and 1856.

  • Arlidge, J. T. (John Thomas), 1822-1899.
Date:
[1857?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The Middlesex County Lunatic Asylums, and their reports for 1855 and 1856. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    instances may often happen where disease has made such havoc of the frame before the observation of the unprofes- sional and inexperienced e^e notes it, that recovery is hopeless. The medical officer, confronted by hundreds of cases, cannot watch each one from day to day, and must trust to attendants to call his attention to the symptoms of disease. Among the female attendants these disadvantages must be still more felt; they are not nurses, accustomed to medical matters; they are besides mostly young: from these circumstances, judging from our experience of the backwardness of young women to report various particulars concerning female patients, it, happens that when sickness occurs, or a recent case is admitted, they are found very inefficient, and the consequent cause of much prejudice to the cases under their care. In these great establishments, moreover, where the medical element is almost null in effect, what security is there for the due administration of medicines, for the proper employment of various appliances to the sick, and for the observation of the effects of remedial agents ? Surely, from these circum- stances, as well as from the consideration of the previously noted evils, it becomes evident that large asylums, such as those of Middlesex, are unfit for the treatment of insanity; they may serve for chronic cases tolerably well, but for the treatment of recent attacks, a special establishment is necessary, in short, a lunatic hospital for the county. Un- fortunately, the impression prevails among the magistrates of Middlesex, that insane people only require to be placed in an institution among other insane people, and where a moral system of treatment is pursued. That insanity is a disease of the bodily structure, just as an inflammation of the. lungs, and requires systematic medical treatment, is a truth ignored by them. The resident medical officer in one ol their asylums is with them nothing more than an officer by having whom, the expense of a visiting surgeon is avoided. The superintendent is an overlooker and director, the head of a staff of subordinate officers, but cannot rightly be termed the physician of the asylum ; he is wanted to exercise medical functions only when casualties demand, and, as far as practicable, to attempt something in the medical way before a patient makes [his exit from this world, provided always, that the patient has complained, or that the existence of illness has been discovered by the attendant.