First annual report of the medical officers on the state and management of the asylum for the insane poor of the County of Norfolk / [Norfolk Lunatic Asylum].

  • Norfolk Lunatic Asylum (Norfolk, England)
Date:
1854
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: First annual report of the medical officers on the state and management of the asylum for the insane poor of the County of Norfolk / [Norfolk Lunatic Asylum]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Deaths. We notice this, as cases too frequently occur in which patients, having recovered and been returned to their homes, have either found their former employers un¬ willing to engage them, or at so reduced a rate of wages, that the effect on their mental condition, pro¬ duced by disappointment, and on their physical state through want of sufficient food, has been most preju¬ dicial, and many have been rendered incurable by this means alone. Great care is taken in order that patients shall not be sent away until they have become convalescent, and fit to follow their ordinary employment; and the parish authorities should, we think, do as much as lies in their power for them. The proportion of deaths per cent, to the average number daily resident has been 11.7 (or 8.8 per cent, of the whole number under treatment); we do not consider this proportion altogether unfavourable, for in 1844 it was 18.9, and during the five years ending December, 1849, it was 15 per cent.; since that time a gradual decrease has been experienced. The result of observations in all the Institutions for Pauper Lunatics exclusively, containing more than 4,000 patients annually, extending over a period of twenty years, and in some instances longer, was found by Dr. Thurnam to be 13.88 per cent, on the average number under treatment; the lowest mor¬ tality was 10 per cent., and the highest 19 per cent. The grand average of all Asylums in England, Scotland, Ireland, France, America, &c., was found to be 11.86 per cent. The conclusion which Dr. Thurnam has drawn from his observation has been that, out of 127.700 cases in regard to Pauper Asylums, “ a mortality