Report of Murray's Royal Asylum, Perth, for the triennial period, 1865 to 1868 / [James Murray's Royal Asylum for Lunatics].

  • James Murray's Royal Asylum for Lunatics.
Date:
1868
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report of Murray's Royal Asylum, Perth, for the triennial period, 1865 to 1868 / [James Murray's Royal Asylum for Lunatics]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    [ndividual- sation in treatment. Restraint >y persons Contrasted tb Re¬ straint by inefficiency : >f Atfcend- ■: tnts in ex- :eptional r liases. Building Lmprove- inents. and disease list given in the very same reports. We hold the only proper rule of guidance to be “ What is best for a given patient under given circumstances ? ”—and the decision of this question ought to be perfectly independent of what may be thought or said by those who cannot have the same opportunities of forming a proper judgment as the asylum physician in immediate charge of the said patient. Con¬ sidered from this point of view, we have been led by experience to assign a high place in point of usefulness, in certain exceptional or occasional cases, to the “Protection Bed.” In certain senses or cases it may be considered a substitute for the assistance of a group of attendants. But we are satisfied that no arrangement of attendants, however numerous, will produce the same conservative results as to life and health. We have found it save or prolong life, maintain or restore health, in cases that otherwise and elsewhere would inevitably, we believe, have died in padded rooms or infirmaries in the midst of a numerous staff of nurses and attendants. What we have seen in other asylums, and what we feel must exist in all asylums that open their doors to the paralytic, the epileptic, the diseased, the denuders —and few asylums do not—lead us to be strongly of opinion that no asylum should be unprovided with some such beds, be their designation what it may. It is only in exceptional and occasional cases that they are required —but for these cases it is by very far the best arrange¬ ment—for which no other arrangement, with which we are acquainted, will form an efficient substitute. The efforts to keep in bed, whether by night or day, certain patients by means of three or four [or more] attend¬ ants, who are supposed to be unremitting in their vigilance [a suppo¬ sition which surely betrays an unfortunate ignorance of, and unwar¬ ranted confidence in, frail human nature], we believe to be absurd on the one hand, and pregnant of danger on the other. One of its most fertile results is broken ribs: an “accident” which, common in asylums and workhouses, generally fails to be properly accounted for. The use of such beds renders it unnecessary, moreover, to permit a patient of the class we have under review to wander about naked, or in a night-dress, in his own bedroom or a “padded room,”* in the depth of winter, exposing his person to the almost certain dangers of cold, and the probable accidents (then improperly so-called) of bruises, fractures, or dislocations—in other wTords, to sure sources, in such patients, of injury, disease, or death. The alterations on the Asylum buildings, referred to in our last published Report (1865, p. 14), were some time ago completed; and, in addition, a handsome Lodge has been erected within the grounds an arrangement which secures his for the Head Male Attendant * Tn this Institution there is no “ Padded Room.”