Twenty-first annual report of the county and city of Worcester Pauper Lunatic Asylum.

  • Worcester Pauper Lunatic Asylum.
Date:
1874
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

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

    12/104 (page 12)
    u by the Local Government Board. This case was communicated to onr “ office. Two male patients were found dead in bed, the cause of death u being epilepsy ; with these exceptions the mortality calls for no “ observation beyond this remark, viz., that many of the admissions u appear to have been of moribund persons, e. y.—9 deaths took place 11 within two months of admission, some of them within a very few “ days. We regret very much that the propriety of removal of the u insane to the Asylum in an earlier stage of their malady is not “ sufficiently considered. “ There is no record of any resort to restraint since the last visit, “ but in the interval 13 men and 17 women have been placed in (i seclusion, the former altogether upon 72, the latter upon 109, “ occasions. “ A very large proportion of the patients on the books are infirm. “ We found in our passage through the wards 23 men and 26 women in “ bed from various causes, some of them in a dying condition ; and we £( learnt that 63 male patients and 117 female patients of the pauper u class, besides 6 of each sex among the private patients, were under c ‘ medical treatment. u When small-pox prevailed in this neighbourhood some months “ ago, the patients, officers, attendants, and servants of this Asylum “ were, as a precautionary measure, all vaccinated, but no epidemic has “ broken out in the Asylum. The visitation of patients by friends “ coming from infected districts was also forbidden, and patients from u those districts were refused. u We yesterday saw every patient on the books, except the 2 men 11 and 2 women absent on trial, heard ail who showed any disposition “ to speak to us, and ourselves entered into conversation with many. “ The general demeanour was most orderly: we rarely see in our “ visits to Asylums such entire absence of excitement in the patients; u the men and women were also well and neatly dressed, and in many “ ways shewed that the staff of attendants did its duty thoroughly, “ though it is certainly not too strong in numbers. We were glad to “ see in several wards the attendance of a married couple upon the “ infirm men and idiot boys. A second male night attendant has been “ appointed since our colleagues were here, and the suicidal and “ epileptic, with few exceptions, have been brought together at night to “ admit of more strict supervision. The wet and dirty cases now “ average 16 in the male, and 32 in the female division. “ We were exceedingly glad to hear that the Committee of Visitors “ has ordered that a subdued light of gas should be kept up at night in “ all the passages, corridors, and attendants’ rooms. In the Infirmaries “ occupied by patients seriously ill, or suieidally disposed, a light is also “ burnt all night.