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

  • Worcester Pauper Lunatic Asylum.
Date:
1856
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

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

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    exhaustion is assigned as the cause of death in 2 cases; decay and exhaustion consequent upon advanced life was fatal in 3 cases; while cirrhosis of the liver, chronic disease of the knee-joint, strangulation of a knuckle of intestine from intus¬ susception, chronic vomiting, and diarrhoea with abstinence, furnished each one death. It would appear from this enumeration that disease of the ordinary character was the cause of death in the whole of these cases, and that those only are special which are ascribed to the exhaustion consequent upon maniacal excitement, hut such would not he a strictly correct statement, for in many of them the fatal termination was the result of habits and conduct incidental to their insanity; hut in tabulating the causes of death, the name of the disease which proved fatal is given as the cause, excluding from that account any notice of the causes which may have induced such disease. Amongst the insane, the depraved appetites of some, the abstemiousness or voracity of others, the degradation of habits, the occasional infliction of injuries on their own persons, the excitement and constant activity of many, the exhaustion of their nervous energy, the want of sleep, the disinclination to assume the horizontal posture, the depressing effects of long-continued mental disease and the concomitant debility, are frequent exciting causes of their diseases. There is great difficulty in learning from many of them any account of their symptoms or sufferings, and which are frequently masked by them to a great extent till their diseases have assumed a degree of intensity incapable of the relief which might, in the first instance, have been afforded them; these various conditions concur in rendering the diseases of the insane and their treatment somewhat different to that which prevails among the general community.