Third annual report of the Cumberland & Westmorland Lunatic Asylum : 1864.

  • Cumberland and Westmorland Lunatic Asylum.
Date:
1865
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Third annual report of the Cumberland & Westmorland Lunatic Asylum : 1864. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    here at an earlier period of the disease than last year. I made some remarks last year on the folly of keeping cases at home who ought to he sent to asylums, and protested against the system which was prevalent among the relieving officers of sending insane patients to workhouses previous to sending them to asylums. Many patients have complained bitterly to me when they have recovered that they were sent to “ the Union ” before coming here. One woman, now almost well, says that she was sent to a work- house when she first became insane, and because she was sleepless and noisy the sane inmates beat her severely with sticks. The bodily health of the patients on admission was indifferent, or bad in more than one-half the cases. There were only a small number of skilled artizans among the patients admitted. The two counties contain chiefly an agricul¬ tural and mining population. The forms of insanity in this Asylum are not usually so acute as if the patients had been drawn out of the inhabitants of a large city; but the depressed and suicidal cases are quite as numerous as in most asylums. Eleven of the cases were suicidal, and six had actually made attempts on their own lives. Three of them were the most determined suicides before admission I have ever seen, and if I had to select three cases in which the benefits of asylum treatment were most typically illustrated I should select those. One of them was a married woman who had the im¬ pulse to destroy herself so strong that though she knew what she was doing, and knew how wrong it was, she made many and persistent attempts to obey it. She wished to come to the Asylum for her own security, and immediately she came within the building she felt so safe that her thoughts were entirely diverted to other subjects, and she never had a suicidal idea again. In a few months she returned to her home quite well, and has remained so ever since. In another case a man who had tried to hang himself, and had been cut down, was sent in and never again manifested the slightest tendency to destroy his own life. DISCHARGES. 16 of the patients discharged had recovered, being 30 per cent, on the admissions. Only one case discharged recovered this year had a relapse after returning home. In his case I had, before finally discharging him, allowed him to spend every Saturday night and Sunday with his family for several weeks. Yet such a trial was not sufficient to B