The first annual report of the North Wales Lunatic Asylum, Denbigh : for the year M.DCCC.XLIX.

  • North Wales Counties Lunatic Asylum.
Date:
1849
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The first annual report of the North Wales Lunatic Asylum, Denbigh : for the year M.DCCC.XLIX. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    while he lives)—it is most gratifying to be enabled to state, that he gra¬ dually became confiding and tractable, and he is now as harmless as any patient in the house. In another instance, a poor young creature, who, before her admission, was tied down to her bed for many months, quickly discovered the difference between the treatment she had been previously subject to, and the kindness and freedom she experienced at the Asylum, and very soon gained confidence in those about her, and rapidly recovered. Soon after her discharge from the Asylum, she wrote to the matron, to request she might be taken back as a servant; and she is now an excellent assistant in the wards, and a general favorite with the patients. We have the satisfaction of stating, that we have never been obliged to resort to any mechanical restraint, beyond tem¬ porary seclusion in the padded room ; and then only in cases of great and dangerous excitement. At the commencement of this year, we indulged the patients with a dance—seventy of the patients, males and females, assembled, about six o’clock in the evening, in the corridor on the female side of the house, which was decorated for the occasion with evergreens, &e. A piano forte was procured, and dancing commenced with great spirit, and was kept up till nine o’clock. During the evening, the males were supplied with a moderate allowance of good ale, and the females with tea and a little negus. It was truly gratifying and affecting to witness the decorum as well as the joyous delight of these poor people. The success of this our first experi¬ ment at an assemblage of the sexes was such as to induce us to hope that much good may result from an occasional repetition of a similar indulgence. Since the opening of the Asylum, 142 patients have been admitted :—18 of whom have been discharged cured; 5 at the request of their friends, more or less relieved :—and 10 have died. The amount of cures may ap¬ pear small when placed in comparison with other similar institutions; but it must be taken into consideration that the greater proportion of patients have been removed from other Asylums, many having been confined for years in a state of chronic and hopeless insanity, and in-a very weak and infirm condition of health. We are sorry to observe that great reluctance exists upon the part of many parish authorities to remove their insane paupers into the Asylum, during the early and most curable stage of the complaint. This short’ sighted pecuniary consideration, in preventing patients from being admit-