Thirtieth annual report of the trustees of the State Lunatic Hospital, at Worcester. October, 1862.

  • State Lunatic Hospital at Worcester.
Date:
1863
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Thirtieth annual report of the trustees of the State Lunatic Hospital, at Worcester. October, 1862. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    paupers in all the workhouses of England and Wales, was sixty-nine cents a week for each, through the four years, 1855 to 1859 inclusive, while the average cost of supporting the pau¬ per lunatics, in the thirty-eight County and Borough Asylums, was two dollars and thirteen cents a week for each, through the same period. The reports of the Inspectors of Lunatic Asylums and of the Commissioners of the Poor in Ireland make similar state¬ ments of the cost of supporting the sane and insane paupers. Through the four years 1856 to 1859, the average cost of all the indoor paupers in the workhouses, for provisions and clothing, was 2s. 2^d., or fifty-three cents a week for each, the average expense of supporting the patients in the sixteen District Lunatic Asylums was £20. 5s. 10d., or ninety-seven dollars and forty-cents a year, and one dollar and eighty-four cents a week for each, through the same period. Some allowance must be made in regard to these statements of the cost of supporting paupers in the almshouses of the State and towns, and in the workhouses of England and Ireland, in comparison with the cost of the inmates of hospitals. The former include all of every age, nursing infants who cost nothing and children who cost very little, as well as adults, whereas none but adults are in the institutions for the insane. EFFECT OF THE TWO POLICIES ON THE USE OF HOSPITALS AND CURE OF PATIENTS. The natural effect of the liberal and the economical policies of offering the hospitals to the use of the people, is manifest in the different ratios of the patients sent, in the early and in the later stages of their malady, to the hospitals in Massachusetts, Ohio, and Indiana. In Ohio 73.7 per cent., in Indiana 70 per cent., in Illinois 70.5 per cent., and in Massachusetts 64.8 per cent, of the patients in their State hospitals were sent in the first year after they were attacked. As a necessary consequence, those States which sent the largest proportion in the early and curable stage, received back the largest proportion in health and power of usefulness, and had the smallest proportion left in confirmed immovable lunacy to be supported for life by their estates or the public treasuries.