The physicians' report and statistical tables for the year 1853 / [Saint Luke's Hospital for Lunatics].

  • Saint Luke's Hospital for Lunatics (London, England)
Date:
[1854?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The physicians' report and statistical tables for the year 1853 / [Saint Luke's Hospital for Lunatics]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    as it did during the preceding Epidemic, but we have every reason to believe that we are now better prepared for it than upon its last visitation. Strict attention has been paid to the ventilation of the Wards and to the first symptoms of Diarrhoea, and all precautionary measures have been taken to ward off any predisposition to the disorder. We take this opportunity of bringing under the notice of the Court, the active manner in which the resident Officers of the Establishment have discharged their respective duties. The Resident Medical Officer, the Steward, and the Matron, de¬ serve our best thanks for the energy they have displayed in fulfilling their arduous employments; and when we state that no accident has occurred to the patients, during the past year, it will be seen that much has been due to their vigilance and to the vigilance of those under their authority, for averting those untoward events which are inevitably connected with Insanity. The average number of patients in the Hospital, was in 1850, 197 ; in .1851, 194 ; and during the last year, 187. The rea¬ son of this diminution is that many County Asylums have lately % ! been completed; some of our Boarders have been withdrawn, and many curable cases, which would have been sent up to Lon¬ don, are now admitted at once into the County Asylums. The opening of the County Asylums having thus taken away many of our patients, the length of time that a patient remains upon the list for re-admission as a Boarder, is consequently much diminished. In July, 1849, there were 90 females and 45 males on this list, and the average time before a female patient was admitted into the Hospital, as a Boarder, was 3% years; in November, 1853, there were only 38 females and no males upon the list. The average time for the re-admission of a female is now only 18 months, and this has been the only year in which a male patient has been transferred from the curable to the in-