Twenty-first annual report of the Suffolk Lunatic Asylum : December, 1858.

  • Suffolk Lunatic Asylum.
Date:
[1859]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Twenty-first annual report of the Suffolk Lunatic Asylum : December, 1858. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    to it, not quite so large, was made into a pie for the patients at the desire of the chief husbandman, who delayed his departure in order to paitake of it, and after a residence of three years and a half, went home cured last week. This man had been twice re-admitted, and each time after an absence of exactly ten years. On being questioned as to the cause of his last admission, his reply was, that he flew into a passion when he was told that he must be sent again from principle. 44 When passion and principle are opposed to each other,” said he, 44 there must be a battle, and I fought them: besides they called me names, and none of my family like to be called names, and are determined to be known only by numbers.” His selected number was 601, and for a long time this was his recognized cognomen. Such biographical sketches, with these maniacal musings during recurrent attacks, occasionally recal both upon the part of the patients themselves and on our own, reciprocal remembrances of kind¬ ness. A woman was re-admitted a short time ago, after an absence of fourteen years, whose accuracy in the descriptive account of the hereditary transmission of her malady, was singularly gratifying. She came full of anger towards her relatives for keeping her at home a long time after her relapse. 44 They knew,” were her words to us, 44 that my mother was insane, and my grandmother was insane, as they had been both in the Asylum, and they must have been good people or they never would have been sent there.” If memory is the most failing faculty in some, it is still most strangely retentive in others : this woman can talk of, or refer to occurrences and events long forgotten by her more sane associates : and we have an old inmate of the House, a resident of more than thirty years standing, who recollects the names of passing individuals with singular accuracy. We had a painter in the House, whose occupation as a good workman, led to his continued engagements from house to house: he could neither read nor write, and never kept