The eighth annual report of the committee of visitors of the County Lunatic Asylum at Colney Hatch : January quarter session, 1859 / [Middlesex County Lunatic Asylum].

  • London (England). County Lunatic Asylum, Colney Hatch.
Date:
1859
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The eighth annual report of the committee of visitors of the County Lunatic Asylum at Colney Hatch : January quarter session, 1859 / [Middlesex County Lunatic Asylum]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    to be probably curable, which, were not complicated with Epilepsy or Paralysis, without limiting the number of beds to be reserved. The Committee were fully aware that they were going a step further than the Act of Parlia¬ ment warranted, in thus affording facilities for the treat¬ ment of cases at as early a stage of the disorder as possible. The manifest advantages, however, to the public were such—not without inconvenience, indeed, to the establish¬ ment, owing to the occasional crowding of the Wards— that they hoped the parish authorities would have seen the benefit accruing from it, and have acquiesced in what was only intended for the advantage of all. The necessary con¬ sequence, however, was, that when the Asylum was full, and over full, of curable or supposed curable cases, the admissions of ordinary cases were curtailed, and parishes which did not happen to have the more favourable class of Patients took umbrage at the exclusion of their Chronic cases. The Guar¬ dians of the Hackney Union remonstrated strongly against the rule ; but the parish of Islington was the cause of its being superseded. A Patient was sent to Colney Hatch as probably curable, and -without the prohibited affections, but was soon discovered by the Medical Superintendent not to come within the rule, and he was accordingly ordered to be discharged, but was actually retained as an ordinary case. So far the parish had nothing to complain of; but they main¬ tained, in a long correspondence with the Committee, that the Act of Parliament did not authorize the arrangement actually enforced, and it was therefore determined to abandon it, and fall back on the provisions of the Act, which enables Committees of Visitors to reserve a certain number of Beds only for specified cases ; and they have reverted to the ori¬ ginal ltegulation, viz., that seven beds shall be reserved for recent cases.