Eighth annual reports for 1866 / Sussex County Lunatic Asylum, Haywards Heath.

  • Sussex County Lunatic Asylum (Haywards Heath, England)
Date:
1867
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Eighth annual reports for 1866 / Sussex County Lunatic Asylum, Haywards Heath. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    26/64 page 24
    OF THE COMMISSIONERS IN LUNACY. Sussex County Asylum, 2>rd and Aith May^ 1866. To-day and yesterday we have visited every part of this Asylum, finding everything in excellent order, and the patients general]y in a favourable state. The admissions since the visit in May, last year, have been 138; the discharges, 56 ; and the deaths, 61; the propor¬ tions of male and female under these three heads respectively being 76 and 61, 26 and 30, and 39 and 20. The mortality is larger than usual, and it would seem that during the past year an unusual number of cases were received in an ex¬ hausted or dying state. Unfortunately, also, immediately after the last visit, small-pox broke out in the wards, origin¬ ating with a patient admitted from Hastings, and from the absence of all means of immediately isolating cases, attack¬ ing more than 60 patients, with fatal results to 4; and also to one male attendant. In five other cases, two of epilepsy and paralysis, and three of disease of the heart, the sudden¬ ness of the deaths rendered inquests necessary—in two of these instances the patients having been found dead; but in all verdicts of natural death were returned. Of the re¬ maining deaths, the principal causes were general palsy, epilepsy, phthisis, disease of the brain, and senile decay. It has been satisfactory to learn that the Committee have
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