Twenty-fourth annual report of the directors of the Dundee Royal Asylum for Lunatics : submitted, in terms of their charter, to a general meeting of the directors, 17th June, 1844.

  • Dundee Royal Asylum for Lunatics.
Date:
1844
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Twenty-fourth annual report of the directors of the Dundee Royal Asylum for Lunatics : submitted, in terms of their charter, to a general meeting of the directors, 17th June, 1844. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    34/44 (page 34)
    The number of patients admitted this year has been fewer than for some years past; the falling off has been principally among the females, and this has arisen from that side of the House haying almost always been full, the accommodation not yet being so complete as the increasing population demands, or as was contemplated in the Plan of the Asylum furnished by Mr Burn. Admissions.—The total number admitted is forty-seven; and, as already stated in the Directors’ Deport, we were obliged to refuse many cases for whom application was made: Had we had room for these, the gross number would have been the average for years past. More than a half of the whole number of males admitted, and upwards of a third of the females, were old cases. Eight of them were complicated with other diseases dangerous to life,—among whom were five epileptics, the largest number of this class admitted here in any one year; we admitted also eleven patients from Gaol: They had been apprehended as lunatic and dangerous to the lieges,—of the number admitted, seven had been pre¬ viously affected with insanity and confined in English and Scottish Asylums, and nine had been ^treated in this Asylum before ; in one case, an interval of five; in another, of six; and, in a third, an interval of twelve years had intervened. We may here add, that two of these three have completely recovered, and the third, we think, will very soon be discharged in a similar state. There is one of these re-admissions who takes periodical paroxysms, and has returned to us voluntarily for the eleventh time, and who also, we have no doubt, will soon again be restored to society. Eighteen of the number were also suicidal patients,—three have since been discharged recovered and two* improved, and, in a few of the remainder, there is some amendment. * We have since heard that these have recovered.