Thirty-fifth annual report of the resident physician of the Belfast District Hospital for the Insane Poor of the counties of Antrim and Down, and the county of the town of Carrickfergus : from 1st April, 1864, to the 31st March, 1865.

  • Belfast District Hospital for the Insane.
Date:
1865
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Thirty-fifth annual report of the resident physician of the Belfast District Hospital for the Insane Poor of the counties of Antrim and Down, and the county of the town of Carrickfergus : from 1st April, 1864, to the 31st March, 1865. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    SUICIDAL AND HOMICIDAL CASES. No year passes by without its anxieties and its unceasing cares being supplemented more or less largely in respect of those in¬ mates whose insanity is complicated with either a suicidal or a homicidal tendency, or both together in the one and the same individual. That day is considered a happy one that no dread accident occurs in connexion with these much afflicted and much to be sympathized with cases, and the same may be said of the night also ; for, from morn till night, and night till morn, a heavy load of responsibility rests upon all in charge of such patients, whose persevering ingenuity and settled purpose to accomplish the one object they have unceasingly in view, that of self-destruction, no one can form the most remote concep¬ tion of, except those whose lot it is to be in their daily, in their hourly care. During the past year actual attempts at suicide before admission were made by nine of the inmates (two males, seven females), those attempts having been by—viz :— drowning, four (one male, three females); by cutting the throat, three (one male, two females); by precipitation from a window, one (female) ; and by taking poison, one (female). The liomi- cidally inclined numbered four (one male, three females), and those who threatened to commit suicide were four also (one male, three females). ACCOMMODATION. The same crowded condition of the house generally existed throughout the year as heretofore, there having been upwards of thirty on the books over and above the number for which the Institution has the requisite provision. THE INTENDED HOSPITAL FOE THE INSANE, AT DOWNPATRICK, FOR THE COUNTY DOWN. It is now fully four years since it was finally agreed upon by the Authorities that the inmates belonging to the County Down