Annual report of the Royal Edinburgh Asylum for the insane for the year 1849.

  • Royal Edinburgh Asylum.
Date:
1850
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Annual report of the Royal Edinburgh Asylum for the insane for the year 1849. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    17/40 (page 17)
    11 tion, and of tlie general soundness of those principles upon which the management and treatment of the inmates of this Hospital have been conducted.* The number of patients removed uncured, during the past year, greatly exceeds that of any former year. The removal of uncured or partially cured patients from an Asylum is, in almost every case, a matter of regret. In some cases it arises from the anxiety and ill-judged affection of friends, impatient of nature's plans of cure, and sanguine that the effect of change, or the gratification of desire, or the influence of personal kindness may hasten a cure, when too frequently they only precipitate a relapse, in many instances fatal to all further hope. In not a few cases such removals are caused by the poverty of friends, and their inability to afford what they are too proud to allow the public to pay. In other cases—and these form the excess of the last year’s removals—they are due, not to the res augusta domi, but to the public outcry against parochial burdens, and the anxiety of parochial boards to diminish their rates, by keeping, if possible, their insane poor, as well as their sane paupers, on the lowest possible scale of charges. Under this pressure from without, six natives of Ireland, who had been inmates of the Asylum for periods varying from six years to a few months, some of them curable cases, and others incurable—some of them harmless and hopeless imbeciles, and others dangerous both to themselx es and others, were removed from the Asylum, and landed in the parishes of their nativity, in Ireland, there to be consigned to Asylums, should the authorities choose to add them to the list of paupers, or there left to take care of themselves, or beg their way back to this country, vhere their only relatives reside, as they best could. Under the same influence, 25 inmates of the Asylum were trans- erred to the workhouses,—some being incurable and harmless im- jeciles, incapable of appreciating the comforts of an Asylum, or of ieriving benefit from its means of treatment, and recommended, herefore, as proper objects for such a change; but others, I regret o say, neither incurable, harmless, or imbecile, who, having acquired labits of industry, or learned trades in the Asylum, were deemed * The total number of cases admitted into the Asylum since its foundation 2179 • the number dismissed cured is 878. The ratio of cures to the whole Lmber of cases admitted is 40*3 per cent., and, deducting those still un er treatment, 51 5. Removal of uncured Patients. Removals to the Poorhouse.