The curability of insanity : a series of studies.

  • Earle, Pliny, 1809-1892.
Date:
1887 [©1886]
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The curability of insanity : a series of studies. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    persons, and not to cases ; that is, that the author of the demonstration believed, or appears to have believed, that three-fourths of all the men and women who be- come insane can be permanently cured. The truth of this assumption is necessary to the truth of the deduc- tion at which he arrives. The belief that mental disorders are thus largely curable is not entertained by the Board of Public Charities of Pennsylvania alone. It has become pretty widely prevalent among persons interested in the sub- ject of insanity, but not, themselves, engaged in the treatment of the insane. • Some of these persons enter- tain the opinion that even a still larger proportion are susceptible of cure. It is one of the objects of this paper to ascertain, if possible, whether this opinion is justified by the facts. As an almost, if not entirely, universal rule, the superintendents of the institutions for the insane report the recoveries of eases rather than of persons. A person may be admitted more than once into a hospital, and hence make as many cases as the number of his admis- sions. As a case he may recover several times; and not only so, but, after several recoveries, he may still die insane. His history then furnishes to the statistics of insanity several recoveries of cases but not one per- manent recovery of a person. Thus, at the State Hos- pital at Northampton, a man was discharged, recovered, seven times, and improved, once, in the course of nine years; and subsequently committed suicide at home. Another man has been discharged, recovered, six times, on the same number of admissions, in the course of fifteen years. One woman was discharged, recovered,