Further report of the Commissioners in Lunacy, to the Lord Chancellor. Presented to both houses of Parliament by command of Her Majesty.

Date:
1847
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Further report of the Commissioners in Lunacy, to the Lord Chancellor. Presented to both houses of Parliament by command of Her Majesty. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    the Report of 1844, which relates to the subject (p. 79). The number of recent curable cases admitted into Asylums is still comparatively small. The majority consists either of chronic cases, of persons in a confirmed and hopeless state of mental alienation, or of others who arrive m broken down or feeble health, reduced by poverty and neglect, or exhausted by disease. And thus the amount of cures becomes necessarily low, whilst the rate of mortality is alarmingly increased. The mortality in Lunatic Asylums has been the subject of so much misapprehension, that we think it expedient to quote a few passages from some Reports lately published • and first from a Report made by some members of this Commission to this Board, and forwarded Sir George Grey, on the sub- ject of the Hay dock Lodge Asylum, which also ex- press our opinions on this point. The Commis- sioners who made that Report, after stating that they propose to offer a few remarks of more “general application on the mortality in Lunatic Asylums,” a subject respecting which they consider that erroneous notions are entertained, proceed in the following words, viz.:— u The public are not generally aware, how incor- rect would be a comparison between the inmates of such establishments and the population of work- houses, prisons and other receptacles, in which large numbers of persons are congregated, who are lor the most part in sound health, or who at least do not labour under any particular disorder that threatens to shorten life. A great proportion of Mortality in Lunatic Asylums. Opinion of Commis- sioners.