Superintendent's report for 1848 / Littlemore Asylum.

  • Littlemore Asylum
Date:
[1849?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Superintendent's report for 1848 / Littlemore Asylum. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    retained in Union Workhouses until emergency or illness has suggested the necessity for their removal hither ; but the advantages of early application for the relief afforded by a public Asylum, cannot be too much enforced. The arrangements made here for the accommodation of the afflicted, are such as cannot be supplied at home. The moral control to which they are subjected by experienced Attendants has an effect far more beneficial than the restraint of anxious friends on the one hand,—or of powerful medicines, counteracted by exciting causes,— on the other . I have already observed that the year 1848 was unfavorable to this Institution, both on account of the Season, and the excitement of the Patients created by other causes. The mortality has been greater in the past than during the preceding year ; whilst the number of recoveries in propor¬ tion to the number of Inmates, has been less. The recoveiies in 1847 were unusually numerous, arising from the class of Patients admitted, and from the greater quiet maintained in the Asylum.-The average rate of Discharges by recovery in 1848 has been ten per cent, upon the whole number of Patients; and the average rate of Deaths has been in the same proportion. The class of Patients on whom the greatest mortality has fallen requires attention. In the year 1847 the mortality was nine per cent, on Patients received immediately from their homes; and in 1848 it was nearly eighteen per cent, on Per¬ sons so received,—and only about six per cent, on those received from Houses of confinement;—the total mortality for the latter . year being a fraction more than ten per cent.which is not a