Forty-seventh annual report of the directors of the Dundee Royal Asylum for Lunatics : submitted, in terms of their charter, to a general meeting of the directors, 17th June, 1867 with the reports of the medical superintendent and treasurer of the institution.

  • Dundee Royal Asylum for Lunatics.
Date:
1867
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Forty-seventh annual report of the directors of the Dundee Royal Asylum for Lunatics : submitted, in terms of their charter, to a general meeting of the directors, 17th June, 1867 with the reports of the medical superintendent and treasurer of the institution. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    the real duration of illness. In some, where the duration of ill¬ ness was given at a week, the very nature of the mental malady, from which the patient suffered, pointed to years of previous aberration. The register of recoveries indicates the results most to be desired ; but to notice these at any length would be but to enu¬ merate the majority of the difficulties, hopes, and disappoint¬ ments daily experienced in the treatment of the insane. In some cases, the progress towards recovery was steady, rapid, and con¬ firmed ; in others, when a satisfactory improvement had been accomplished, the whole was undone by some sudden and in many cases unaccountable change; while, in a few, improvement set in when it was least expected. In one, recovery took place after 2£ years of supposed hopeless illness ; and in two, after the patients had been for months in a state of the most degraded and apparently helpless fatuity. Of the patients discharged, or removed not recovered, 9 were transferred to the Lunatic Wards of the Poor Houses of Dundee and of Liff and Benvie; two to the District Asylum for Eifeshire; one to the District Asylum for Perthshire; and one to Barnhill Parochial Asylum. As already stated, the number of deaths, during the past year, has been 12, and of these 5 occurred on the male side, and 7 on the female. The preponderance of the female mortality over that of the male is an unusual occurrence, and, in the present instance, depended on the unsatisfactory state of the bodily health of many on admission. The causes of death were as follows : three died from general paralysis, two from exhaustion, two from paralysis, and one each from marasmus, senile decay, cardiac dropsy, and epilepsy. Of the patients thus removed, six were admitted since the be¬ ginning of the year 1866; two were admitted during the year 1865; and the remainder during the years 1864, 1848, 1846, and 1840. The average age at death was 49TV years. This average is however much reduced by the extreme youth of one of the number, namely, 15 years. Without including this case, the average would be 52X2T.