The report of the Committee of Visitors and Medical Superintendent of the Devon County Lunatic Asylum.

  • Devon County Lunatic Asylum.
Date:
[1858?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The report of the Committee of Visitors and Medical Superintendent of the Devon County Lunatic Asylum. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    3/18
    OF VISITORS. Since the period of our last report, the state of the asylum has been in all respects most satisfactory, and no change has taken place in the general management of the institution to call for any particular notice. The balance in hand on the maintenance account, is £1275 8s. 9d., and £1000 further of the original building debt has been paid off, which has been thus reduced to £29,500. The number of patients admitted, during the past year, has been 154 ; the number discharged is 78, of whom 6 have been relieved, 3 not improved, and 69, i.e., 35 males and 34 females recovered. The deaths have been 41, the number in the preceding year was 40; but as the number of patients has greatly increased since that time, the decrease in the rate of mortality has been J per cent. There are now in the asylum 555 patients, viz., 245 males and 310 females. The greatest number in the asylum at any one period has been 569; the total number under treatment during the year, 673 ; and the average number of resident patients, 544. In our last report we stated that we had determined on erecting a new building for females, capable of containing 30 patients, on a plan so arranged as to admit of being extended, without any change in the original design. In consequence of the great increase in the number of patients, we considered at our first monthly meeting the expediency of providing the further accommodation required, and as it appeared to us that this would be effected in the most desirable manner, by the extension of the building then in course of erection,