Fourteenth report of the Derbyshire County Pauper Lunatic Asylum.

  • Derbyshire County Pauper Lunatic Asylum.
Date:
[1866?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Fourteenth report of the Derbyshire County Pauper Lunatic Asylum. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    9/18 (page 9)
    is imther increased by tliG character which. Mental Derangement I now assumes. The violent and frantic Mania, once so common, is becoming more rare, and is replaced or represented by morbid ! gloom, despondency, and great bodily prostration. The intellect is not so wildly bewildered, but the feelings are more deeply Sf affected, and, therefore, the ministrations of a discreet and pious 3 Pastor becomes a powerful auxiliary to the Physician. The Sermons of our present Chaplain are prepared to meet the mental conditions of the large number of Patients who are suffering from (.morbid fears and despondency, and his services would be more prontable to the Patients, if conducted in a better room. The mere transition of such Patients from the walls of their daily abode to a Church external to it, and possessing the form and character which are associated in their memories as belonging to a sacred aplace, would aid in dispersing the shadows which rest upon their I feelings, and in strengthening the sacred words which fall from the dips of the Pieacner. This has been experienced wherever the change has been wisely carried out. At the County Asylum of Worcester, at a cost of about Two Thousand Pounds, the change ivhich I earnestly urge, namely, the conversion of an unconsecrated -oom into a Dining Hall, or Recreation Room, and the building of cm ecclesiastical structure in the grounds of the Asylum, has been •named out, and the Chaplain of that Institution reported to the Committee of Visitors in the year following “ I have great satisfaction in being able to inform you that the ?Siew Chapel has already been productive of the most beneficial effects m the Inmates of the Asylum. The congregations on a Sunday are arge, and nearly as orderly, and quite as reverential as most congre¬ gations of sane persons.” Like effects have followed in other places. The Patients con¬ duct themselves well in our present Chapel, meagre as it is,—but