Second annual report of the county and city of Worcester Pauper Lunatic Asylum.

  • Worcester Pauper Lunatic Asylum.
Date:
1855
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Second annual report of the county and city of Worcester Pauper Lunatic Asylum. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    failed to have any benefit or influence in inducing them to take sufficient nourishment for their sustenance. These cases for the most part require medical treatment for some derangement of a functional nature in some part of the alimentary canal, on the removal of which, the Patients often voluntarily take or ask for their meals. Cases, however, do occasionally occur when, for the sustaining of life, it is necessary that food should he administered in some form, and in these the plan of feeding through the nose by means of an elastic tube is the most easy of accomplishment. Assistance has also been derived in these cases from the use of chloroform, when the person often involuntarily swallows the necessary food without further trouble. It is necessary that the effects of the anaesthetic be closely watched, and not permitted to go too far, otherwise some accident might occur from the passage of the food down the trachea. One of these cases, an old man near 70 years of age, and long a useful assistant in his gallery, became much depressed in mind, and subject to extreme terror, to escape from which he constantly strove to make away with himself. Although for a time sustained by the exhibition of strong and nutritious food, his restlessness and profound despondency were such, as to depress his strength so much, that the occurrence of a diarrhoea put a period to his sufferings. Table VI. shows the occupation of those admitted* Labourers and their wives are the most numerous class in the county likely to be sent to the Asylum, and accordingly we find these form about 25 per cent, of the total number received. Domestic servants are the next in frequency, who, from their position, anxieties, and misfortunes of life, are the most exposed to causes likely to produce an attack of insanity. The trades are represented by the admission of a few persons, but none in such a remarkable manner as to call for any separate notice.