Report of the Committee of Visitors of the Lunatic Asylum for the Borough of Birmingham, presented to the Town Council in January, 1859, being their eighth annual report : together with the reports of the Medical Superintendent and Chaplain also an account of the receipts and payments to the end of the year 1858 / Birmingham Borough Lunatic Asylum.

  • Birmingham Borough Lunatic Asylum.
Date:
1859
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report of the Committee of Visitors of the Lunatic Asylum for the Borough of Birmingham, presented to the Town Council in January, 1859, being their eighth annual report : together with the reports of the Medical Superintendent and Chaplain also an account of the receipts and payments to the end of the year 1858 / Birmingham Borough Lunatic Asylum. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    MEDICAL SUPERINTENDENT’S REPORT. The Medical Superintendent has the honour to lay before the Committee of Visitors his Eighth Annual Report on the state and management of the Asylum. During the year which has just expired the sanitary condition of the Asylum has been good; its inmates having enjoyed a perfect freedom from any epidemic disease. It has been main¬ tained in excellent working order, and its humane objects have been carried out at least as efficiently as in any previous year. But, notwithstanding the vigilance of the officers, two ‘occur¬ rences of a painful nature, which will be specially noticed in a future part of the Report, cast a gloom, for a time, over the whole establishment. The admissions during the year have been 166—92 males and 74 females—which, together with the 330 left at the end of the previous year, make a total of 496 patients wffio have been under treatment. Of this number 79 have been dis¬ charged recovered, being 47 per cent, upon the admissions, and six more than in any former year ; 22 were re-admissions, 7 of that number having relapsed within the year; and 29 were private patients. The average daily number was 345; the highest number on any one day 356 ; the lowest 329. There are now 855 patients in the Asylum, with the almost certain prospect of a regular increase ; whereas, it was not designed by the architect to contain, at the most, more than 320. This fact shews the urgent necessity there is for that extension of the building which was lately resolved upou, and for which arrangements are now in progress.