Twenty-second annual report of the Suffolk Lunatic Asylum : December, 1859.

  • Suffolk Lunatic Asylum.
Date:
[1860]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Twenty-second annual report of the Suffolk Lunatic Asylum : December, 1859. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    !r:b:po:r,i?. It has been suggested that it might not be considered out of place in presenting this Annual Report, if we attempted shortly to introduce it by a retrospective view of the gradu¬ ally progressive stages by which the Asylum has been brought to its present condition. The past may in some measure have been forgotten, and the present be but imperfectly known, while each must have their bearings on the future. Whether opinions held and acted on for the best portion of life, will warrant the value that we may be disposed ourselves to place personally upon them we will not inquire. All we are anxious to eor 7ey is the assurance that the condition of the Asylum as it at present appears, has not been obtained without such anxieties as have upset in much shorter periods some stronger minds than our own. It was stated decidedly in 1853 that not more than one superintendent in ten had held his office for a period of ten years. Prolonged con¬ tinuance m asylum life is of very rare occurrence, and though we may have failed to profit as we ought by this experience, we have what may not in all respects be very consolatory to feel, the standing of the oldest medical superintendent in England in years, and the longest in Asylum management. In the year 1829, when the Suffolk Lunatic Asylum Was opened there were only nine county asylums in England; the practice in lunacy was comparatively speaking very little understood, and a compulsory system was generally adopted in the treatment of the insane poor. Diffidence and fear B