The alleged increase of lunacy : a farther note / by C. Lockhart Robertson, M.D.

  • Robertson, C. Lockhart (Charles Lockhart), 1825-1897.
Date:
[1870?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The alleged increase of lunacy : a farther note / by C. Lockhart Robertson, M.D. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

    19/36 (page 15)
    insane in asylums to the population, has risen from 316 to 1003 to the 10,000. The proportion has thus been tripled in the period. 3. There is a continued yearly increase in the asylum popu- lation. This has gradually risen from the rate of 400 a year, which it was previous to the law of 1838, to a yearly increase of 600 and 1,300, but since 1862 there has been a manifest yearly decrease, and the yearly increase has fallen to between 800 and 900. 4. This yearly decrease in the ratio of increase in the asylum M. Lunier next passes in review the admissions into the French asylums since 1838, and observes that while the annual rate of increase in 1836 was 8.73 per cent., it fell in 1860-64 to 1'97. He is of opinion that the apparent increase of in- sanity in France, the result of increased asylum admissions, is decreasmg both absolutely and relatively. The causes which still tend to maintain it are, he says, not an increase in the disease, but the progressive confidence shown by the nation in the management of the asylums, and the slow removal of the prejudices which formerly induced families to hide their insane relations at home. Another cause is the greater num- ber sent by the Administration to asylums, and especially in the districts where new asylums are being opened, and in the immediate vicinity of these asylums. M. Lunier thus con- cludes this section of his paper :— Je n'ai pas besoin d'ajouter. Messieurs,que ces deux causes d'augmentation du chifPre des admissions—mais nullement du nombre des alienes—disparaitront par la force meme des choses, ou tout au moins n'accroitront bientot plus que dans une pro- portion insignificante le chifire total des entrees. population may be thus shown:— 1841-46 1846-51 1856-61 1868 YEAKS. ANNUAL INCREASE IN THE FRENCH ASYLUM POPULATION. 5*94 per cent. IV,—The Quarterly Journal of Science. In the number for April, 1870, there is an article by Dr. Martin Duncan, F.E.S., on Insanity, very ably and carefully