Sixth annual report of the Suffolk Lunatic Asylum : December, 1843.

  • Suffolk Lunatic Asylum.
Date:
1844
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Sixth annual report of the Suffolk Lunatic Asylum : December, 1843. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    their recovery. Perhaps, it may be considered a matter of feeling, though hardly of feeling only, and consequently requiring notice, their being brought sometimes in an open cart by police-men, giving an apparent criminality to afflictive distress. We are very free here from the unlicensed exercise of those debasing passions which are justly charged with the developement of mania. Intemperance does not appear to be the cause with us, beyond the proportion of 7 cent, and by taking the calculation either on our late annual admissions, or upon a general estimate of fourteen years, there is not much beyond a fractional variation. A very far higher <|P cent- age is given, according to late legislative in¬ vestigations, and returns from manufacturing places; so that, while as agricultural residents, we claim exemption from both the excitements of intellectualism, and the distractions of a city, we stand in this respect on the higher vantage ground, of a more outward morality. It may be questioned, according to a very high and valuable authority,* whether inebriety is as frequent a cause of insanity as is generally sup¬ posed ; whether it is not as often a symptom as a cause, “ degrading the intellects before it perverts them.” * Dr, Millingen.