Statistics of insanity of the Crichton Royal Institution, Dumfries / by Hugh D. Stewart.

  • Stewart, Hugh D.
Date:
1865
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Statistics of insanity of the Crichton Royal Institution, Dumfries / by Hugh D. Stewart. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    20/26 (page 18)
    The preceding tables are interesting when compared with those immediately before them,, as showing that patients are very frequently brought to be treated in an asylum when the chance of arresting the mental disease, or even saving life, is past. Thus, it will be seen that there are almost no attacks of insanity lasting only for a month or less, as shown in the first of the two tables under the twelfth section; yet there is, as seen in those now under consideration, a great number of cases that terminate, one way or another, within a month of admission. Of these more than one half die, and only a fourth recover. If, however, we are able to tide over the first montlfis residence the chances of death are much diminished, and the chances of recovery improve. In the long periods of residence the per-centages of recoveries gradually fall, while those of death rise. To exhibit, at a glance, the results of treatment of cases admitted year by year into an asylum, is the object of the following table. The number of patients of each sex admitted during each year are placed in the first column, and the other columns show the results at the end of 1864 of the cases so admitted. Some of the cases were, of course, only for a short time under observation, while others were the subjects of treatment for various periods up to twenty-five years. As year follows year there are always found some cases remaining in the asylum, and their gradual accumulation shows how the space in an old establishment gets filled up by in¬ curable cases. Of the patients admitted in the opening year of this institution only eight now remain, and every year tells heavily on the small residue, so that it may almost now be said that the first generation of patients of the Crichton Institution has passed away. In the table following will be found the readmissions arranged in the same manner, and showing the frequency of readmission in individual cases.