The annual report of the Department for the Insane of the Pennsylvania Hospital : for the year ending fourth month 22d, 1889 presented to the 138th annual meeting of the managers of the Pennsylvania Hospital.

  • Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane.
Date:
1889
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The annual report of the Department for the Insane of the Pennsylvania Hospital : for the year ending fourth month 22d, 1889 presented to the 138th annual meeting of the managers of the Pennsylvania Hospital. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    lished that the increase of insanity is disproportioned to that of population, and results more frequently from those occupations incident to large and dense communities; the constant infusion of deteriorating and lowering elements; the direct and more fre¬ quently indirect consequences of intemperance and vicious indul¬ gences, and the diminished resisting power to strain that comes from unfit marriages. Contrary to an impression sometimes enter¬ tained, the increase is not specially marked in the class most actively devoted to business pursuits. The neurotic tendencies developed at the school age by prolonged application to study, and the indirect inherited tendency that comes from intemperance, as factors, may be charged with producing quite as much insanity as the so-called excitement attending American business life. A good brain and a sound body can perform a great amount of work without risk of damage, with a proper allowance for rest. The medical profession in recent years has shown a more intelligent appreciation of nervous disorders and the incipient stage of insanity than formerly, and their patients of the inde¬ pendent class are enabled to follow advice. The hospitals of large cities receiving mainly from this class show no pressing demand for larger accommodations. The increase that is going on is not from those engaged in active business, but among the wage-workers and the middle class, who are neither rich nor in actual poverty, but who are helpless and dependent as soon as they become insane. While the Hospital accommodation is likely to be ample for many years for the admission of the class able to pay the cost of support, for those unable to pay it ought to be prepared to meet the increasing demand that will be made upon it from time to time, by having at its disposal a larger number of free beds, and funds, the income from which may supplement the low rates which certain worthy but reduced persons are able to pay toward the cost of support of relatives. The claims of these cases the Managers are always ready to consider when presented. The accumulation of experience in the care of the insane, and the social advances and exactions, which are the invariable accompaniments of all prosperous communities, impose a con-