The annual report of Dr. Parsey, M.D., medical superintendent of the County of Warwick Pauper Lunatic Asylum, at Hatton, near Warwick, to the Committee of visitors : January 8th, 1864.

  • County of Warwick Pauper Lunatic Asylum.
Date:
[1864?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The annual report of Dr. Parsey, M.D., medical superintendent of the County of Warwick Pauper Lunatic Asylum, at Hatton, near Warwick, to the Committee of visitors : January 8th, 1864. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    6/68 (page 6)
    0 in the jndgment of those about her, rendered her removal here exceedingly desirable, and sufficient to justify the risk attending it. Among the men there have been (as I had also to remark in my Annual E-eport immediately preceding this one) several admissions of persons in an advanced state of mental and physical decay from extensive brain disease, or from great age with failure of mental faculties. All such cases are admitted to die within a comparatively short space from the time of their being brought here ; and it is their deaths that make such an apparent disparity in the mortality of the males and females. Still, their removal here is quite necessary, as they often for a time require very careful management and watchful attention, such as are imprac¬ ticable in their own homes or in an ordinary Union House. Two other of the men admitted in the past year have been a source of much trouble to us: one (J. S.) from having been in a state of active, noisy, restless mania for many months, during which his destruction of clothing, bedding, and the lighter furniture of his ward, has been very great, and himself a fertile cause of irritability and excitement among his fellow patients, from his annoying, quarrelsome, and sometimes pugnacious habits. Some of his most mischievous and troublesome propensities are now subsiding, and we may, I think, look forward to his ultimate recovery ; but none, except those with whom such a case is brought into daily constant relation can conceive the amount of vexatious discomfort it entails on all in any way associated with it. The other (H. T.) has been of an altogether different character. Though under the influence of different delusions having no traceable connexion with his peculiar conduct, and though so far aware of his condition as to be able to express his conviction that this was the safest place for him, his insanity partly manifeste<iikitself for some months in a plausible cunning, exercised in the carrying out of petty destructive mischief, and in attempts to escape, objectless beyond an apparently vague uncontrollable desire to go home, though perfectly aware that he should be at once fetched back. This propensity, for it was nothing more, being unattended by any attempts at concealment to evade returning, had a most prejudicial influence over many other patients, giving rise to a general disposition to imitate his example, and keeping the attendants in a state of continual watchful anxiety. I have mentioned these two cases not from their special pecu¬ liarities, or the rarity of their occurrence, but as exemplifiying the often irksome and wearying duties devolving on those whose time is given to the care and management of the insane. It is a not uncommon remark