Second annual report of the Committee of Visitors, Medical Superintendent, and Chaplain, with an account of receipts and expenditure, for the year ending 31st December, 1872 / Moulsford Lunatic Asylum.

  • Moulsford Lunatic Asylum.
Date:
[1873?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Second annual report of the Committee of Visitors, Medical Superintendent, and Chaplain, with an account of receipts and expenditure, for the year ending 31st December, 1872 / Moulsford Lunatic Asylum. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    30/90 (page 30)
    It was months, however, before this patient’s excitement subsided, although he continued regularly at work. Ultimately he became perfectly calm, coherent, rational in conversation, and free from delusion. In this state he remained during a period of probation in the asylum, which was further extended by his discharge on trial for a month, and at the expiration of this period he was discharged recovered, about ten months subsequent to his admission. It is a significant fact, in a medical point of view, that this patient had a well-marked sanguineous tumoui of the left ear, a pathological condition almost invariably associated with incurable insanity. That he will remain permanently sane, it would be too sanguine to hope; but the history of his case shows that the end justified the means, and also what beneficial effects may result even in an apparently hopeless case from industrial out-door enployment. The general health of the patients, exclusive of those admitted in a state of debility or disease, has been on the whole satisfactory. The asylum inmates have enjoyed complete immunity from epidemic disease, although early in spring diarrhoea was unusually prevalent in the female division. All the cases recovered rapidly under ordinary treatment, except one, in which death was entirely due to the local causes previously mentioned. Hygienic measures were at once taken to obviate any possible source of disease from contamination of the water supply. Every cistern was thoroughly cleaned out; all water- closets and soil-pipes were carefully scrutinized to ascer¬ tain their freedom from leakage, and the walls of closets, lavatories, and sculleries whitened with a mixture of quick-lime. In the course of these investigations nothing was discovered to throw light upon the origin of the disease, which, it may be added, was mild in type and of