Eleventh annual report of the trustees of the State Lunatic Hospital at Worcester. December, 1843.

  • State Lunatic Hospital at Worcester.
Date:
1844
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Eleventh annual report of the trustees of the State Lunatic Hospital at Worcester. December, 1843. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    74/110 (page 74)
    Sunday, roast beef; Monday, boiled mutton ; Tuesday, boiled beef; Wednesday, boiled beef, or cold meat warmed, with one pint of soup for half the patients; Thursday, boiled mutton; Friday, boiled beef; Saturday, boiled beef, or cold meat and one pint of soup for half the patients. I do not quite understand to what class this last allowance is made. I copy the report. Diet at the Retreat, York, England. Breakfast: coffee, bread, butter, toast, &c. Lowest class, bread and milk. Dinner : roast or boiled joints, potatoes, &c.; plain fruits or rice pud¬ ding ; fish, game or poultry when in season; beer or water. The lower classes have no game or poultry, but have occasional hashes. Supper: tea, bread, butter, toast, or bread and milk, porridge. A plain, simple, but substantial diet is generally best for the insane. No greater error is committed than drenching the bowels of such pa¬ tients with active or cooling purges, abstracting blood freely, or placing them upon a low and insufficient diet. In proportion to their number, more of the abstemious become insane than of those who live generously, but temperately. The strength which the insane sometimes exhibit arises from excite¬ ment and impulse, not from great power. The insane, in general, are not as strong or capable of enduring as much as their attendants and other laboring men. They have rarely too much blood, but the blood is unequally distributed. The brain is irritable, but not inflamed, and not often, in mania, congested. The maniac has not a condition of the brain that requires depletion, but an irritable one, that needs cool appli¬ cations, and quieting remedies and regimen. Cold water and ice are much more likely to remove his excitement than bleeding and starva- tion. Narcotics will control him and make him quiet and rational, while he would grow worse if treated with severity, and be less likely to recover. The British physicians have learned not to bleed in mania, but the American physicians have not. While I have been writing this sheet a patient has been brought to my care, spare, pale and feeble, who has been copiously bled four times in ten days, and yet is not the less ex¬ cited. It may be difficult to cure him in his present state, for he is in great danger of becoming fatuous, but if he should recover, it will probably take a longer time to remove the effects of his remedies than to cure his insanity. I have seen many such cases.