Twenty-fifth annual report of the directors of the Dundee Royal Asylum for Lunatics : submitted, in terms of their charter, to a general meeting of the directors, 16th June, 1845.

  • Dundee Royal Asylum for Lunatics.
Date:
1845
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Twenty-fifth annual report of the directors of the Dundee Royal Asylum for Lunatics : submitted, in terms of their charter, to a general meeting of the directors, 16th June, 1845. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    has also proved to be beneficial in many cases. Several patients labouring under suicidal mania have been much benefited by small and oft-repeated doses of the acetate of morphia. Some, when they need medicine, will take nothing but castor oil poured into a little of the tincture of rhubarb or senna. Others will not take medicine at all until they go to the surgery in order that they themselves may see it mixed. There is only one patient (a female) who has a passion for physic; she is always asking for it. And one patient who has frequently a craving desire for food, attended with much internal pain, is almost at once relieved by getting a supply of nutriment on the recurrence of the morbid feeling. For many years past one of our rules has been that the patients’ nails shall be cut once a week, their hair cut once a month, and their bodies thoroughly washed in the warm bath every seventh day; accordingly the general practice has been in compliance with this rule. Baths, hot and cold, are in great requisition when not contra-indicated; sometimes, however, we find that they disagree with the patients, or that the latter are averse to them, and then they are, of course, discontinued. A third cold water pipe has this year been placed in another of the female airing courts. The patients are regularly trained to resort to these pipes, which ope¬ rate like a shower bath in cooling their heads. As remarks generally applicable to the patients, it may be mentioned that the pulse is quicker than natural, even when they have been without exercise or anything else likely to increase the circulation except the state of their nervous system, and the morbid working of their own minds. Their tongues, although moist, are covered with a whitish mucus, pasty, or loaded with a brownish fur, notwithstanding the use of medicine, baths, and other correctives. Paralytics often have cold extremities, and necessarily require to be kept very warm and comfortable. Others of the patients are also very sensitive under cold, and hence we are obliged to have fires in the day rooms almost all the year round. The following particulars are given as illustrative of the general routine of the Establishment. In the month of May one of the patients, accompanied by suitable attendants, went in a carriage