The sixty-fourth annual report of James Murray's Royal Asylum Perth.

  • James Murray's Royal Asylum for Lunatics.
Date:
1891
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The sixty-fourth annual report of James Murray's Royal Asylum Perth. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    circumstances. If the figures representing incur¬ able cases be eliminated, and the recoveries calcu¬ lated only on those admissions regarded as curable, the recoveries would stand at 68 per cent. Of those discharged unrecovered, six were The Removals, transferred to other Asylums in Scotland and England either permanently (3) or temporarily (3); one was placed in private care ; one left to stand trial in London on a criminal charge; and two were returned to their friends as being capable of home life, although they could not be certified of sound mind. The three patients above referred to, who left, transferred permanently to other Asylums, were removed on account of their inability to pay the rate of board charged in this Institution. Two of them belonged to Fife and one to Stirling. The three who were temporarily transferred were unable, by reason of their insanity, otherwise to obtain change of scene and surroundings outside the strictest Asylum care and control. The slow accumulation of chronic cases— Accumulation those who have been unable to leave Asylum care —is therefore represented by the increase in our numbers and these transfers. That is to say, there are 11 more patients for whom recovery is very doubtful. I cannot believe that it is possible to materially improve the present recovery rates in Asylums, so long as they are (rightly) asked to deal with the flotsam and jetsam of humanity, and so long as the outside world manages its affairs on present lines. It is no real reproach to us that we