Medical report of the Royal Lunatic Asylum of Aberdeen, for the year ending 31st December, 1860.

  • Royal Lunatic Asylum of Aberdeen (Aberdeen, Scotland)
Date:
1861
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Medical report of the Royal Lunatic Asylum of Aberdeen, for the year ending 31st December, 1860. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    improvement to simplify tlie character of the present form of Medical Certificates, and to introduce a sup¬ plementary statement of a medical kind, to he signed hy one or other of the certifiers, from which the Physician might gain more information than he now does available for prognosis and treatment. An attempt has been made as usual to give in the statistical division of the Report a view of the causes or combination of causes leading to the mental disturbance in the cases admitted, about which, in regard to the ]3ar- ticular year, the only remark that occurs as in any way different from ordinary is, that the cases attributed to Intemperance are less in number, and those to Excite¬ ment of a devotional description more in number than, usual. These last have occurred in every instance in persons of a nervous constitution of dubious integrity. Such cases occasion a good deal of anxiety, but gene¬ rally seem to do well, although assuming, according to temperament and tendency, all forms of excitement, de¬ lusion, and depression, even that extreme form of the last, which is called Melancholia Attonita, but which is truly a form of Dementia. Thirty-two Patients have been discharged as re¬ covered after periods of residence varying from five or six weeks to three years. The majority of curable cases get well within three or four months ; but under the re¬ gimen of a good Asylum, no case of pure excitement or depression is to be despaired of even after the lapse of years. The character of the cases under treatment this year has been of a low standard, and the average dura¬ tion of residence has been upwards of six months. A