The report of the committee of visitors, superintendent and chaplain of the Cheshire Lunatic Asylum : made to the court of general quarter sessions of the peace, holden at Nether Knutsford, in and for the county of Chester, on Monday, April 10th, 1865.

  • Cheshire County Lunatic Asylum.
Date:
1865
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The report of the committee of visitors, superintendent and chaplain of the Cheshire Lunatic Asylum : made to the court of general quarter sessions of the peace, holden at Nether Knutsford, in and for the county of Chester, on Monday, April 10th, 1865. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    REPORT OF THE MEDICAL SUPERINTENDENT, FOR THE YEAR 1864. My Lords and Gentlemen, I have the honor of submitting to you the Eleventh Annual Medical Report, with the customary Statistical Tables. The number of patients in the Asylum on January 1st, 1864, was 435. The admissions in the course of the year numbered 176; the discharges amounted to 88, of which 69 were recoveries; and the deaths were 64. So that there remained on the last day of the year 459 inmates, showing an increase of 24 over the corresponding period of 1863. ADMISSIONS. The number of admissions in 1864 was greater than during any previous year since the Asylum was opened. Of the 176 patients admitted, 78 were curable cases, being a proportion of 44*3 per cent. In five instances the patients could not be certified to the Commissioners in Lunacy as being insane, although there was but little doubt that symptoms of mental alienation had been exhibited in each case prior to the removal to the Asylum. Amongst the in¬ curables were 13 cases of epilepsy, and 24 of general paralysis. The number of those who had meditated or attempted suicide was 62, being rather more than one-third of the entire admissions. Table 8 shows that in 78 of the new cases the bodily condition was good or moderate, whilst in 98 it was weakly or bad ; a com¬ parison of this with the tables of previous years will show the increasing proportion of this latter class, year by year, and as a necessary sequence, the tendency to decrease the number of re¬ coveries, and increase that of the deaths.