Statistics of insanity : being a decennial report of Bethlem Hospital, from 1846 to 1855 inclusive / by W. Charles Hood.

  • Bethlem Royal Hospital (London, England)
Date:
[1856]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Statistics of insanity : being a decennial report of Bethlem Hospital, from 1846 to 1855 inclusive / by W. Charles Hood. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    which are best calculated to exhibit the experience of the past, must be equally well adapted to collect the information of the future. It only remains to add, that frequent reference will be made to the works of Esquirol, Prichard, and Tliurnam, as indeed is indispensable in any attempt to comment upon the statistics of in- sanity. Three classes of patients are received into Bethlem Hospital, namely,curables, incurables, and criminals. It is to the first of these classes alone that we intend at present to advert. We purpose to do this because the incurables have no special interest at- tached to them. They are simply chronic cases for whom the Hospital offers, if necessary, an asylum for life; and any history of the criminal patients is not permitted by Government to be published. In leaving out these two classes, however, very little is omitted, for in the first place, their numbers are comparatively small, and in the second, there is nothing peculiar in the progress and issue of such cases. What we contemplate in the following pages, is to consider “ the statistical history of the patients admitted as curables into Bethlem Hospital during the ten years ending December, 1855,” by noticing in succession the following subjects :—