Seventeenth annual report of the Somerset County Pauper Lunatic Asylum : from the 1st of January to the end of the year 1864.

  • Somerset County Pauper Lunatic Asylum.
Date:
1865
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Seventeenth annual report of the Somerset County Pauper Lunatic Asylum : from the 1st of January to the end of the year 1864. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    most prolific cause. Delirium, so often construed into insanity, is frequently a symptom of organic disease, especially of the lungs. There are now at least 3 cases of this kind, 2 in the male and 1 in the female infirmary, each having been sent from a distance; 2 of them are mentally recovered but con¬ sidered bodily too ill to be sent home. As a writer in the Review just quoted, at page 156, states :—The attempts to define insanity, and to discover some distinct boundary between it and mental sanity, have hitherto all lamentably failed, and, what is more, will ever fail, for insanity is in fact a general term, and as such indefinable.” In any change that may be hereafter introduced into the Poor Law Bill, the clause which prevents a lunatic from being retained in a Workhouse beyond a period of 14 days should be modified in favour of aged and infirm persons, and those labouring under organic diseases in an advanced stage. Under proper regulations many chronic cases might be provided for in the workhouses, which are not half occupied, as frequently pointed out in previous annual reports, and the indefinite extension of asylums be thus put a stop to. The Government Inspectors of Irish Asylums, in their Thirteenth Report, presented to both Houses of Parliament by command of her Majesty, 1864, have adopted similar views to those I have so long advocated, and state as follows :—“ Taking into full and mature deliberation the whole subject as to how the surplus of the chronic, epileptic, and idiotic classes not placed in asylums, and more whose habits and dispositions render them innoxious, should be supported, and where located; regarding, too, the rapidly decreasing population of this country, the heaviness of local taxation, and the comparatively empty state of the Poor- houses, which at the close of 1863 contained 52,000 inmates against 144,000 ten years previously, it may not be unworthy your Excellency’s consideration to determine whether in each county, according to its size, two or three Poorhouses might not be selected in suitable localities for the reception of such individuals as have just been mentioned.” Additions and Improvements. During the present year the new lodge at the back entrance, opposite the storekeeper’s, has been furnished and occupied by 11 male patients and an attendant.