MEDICAL.
DARJEELING, THE 20TH OCTOBER 1877.
RESOLUTION.
READ—
The Annual Report on the Lunatic Asylums in Bengal for the year 1876.
Read again—
The Report for the previous year, with the orders of Government passed upon it.
THE number of lunatic asylums in Bengal was increased during the year
by the opening of the Hazareebagh Asylum on the 26th May. Up to this
time complaints had been constantly made of the overcrowded condition of
the other asylums, and Sir Richard Temple, took advantage of the removal of
the prisoners from the district to the central jail to provide accommodation
for about 250 lunatics. In according sanction to the establishment of the new
asylum, the Government of India asked that due attention might be paid to
the principles which should govern the reception of lunatics for maintenance
and treatment at the public cost. There is reason to believe that these
principles had been more or less lost sight of, and that a large number
of persons had been received into asylums whose friends were perfectly
well able to give them support and the requisite care, or whose condition
was the temporary result of habits which rendered them unfitting objects
for gratuitous medical treatment in public institutions. The attention of
the district officers was prominently drawn to the subject, and instructions
were issued which have had the effect of considerably reducing the number
of admissions. The principle which has now taken the place of more or
less indiscriminate admission is that persons suffering from the temporary
results of sickness, intemperance, or debauchery, and those whom their
friends ought to support, should be excluded from asylums, and that, in
addition to criminal lunatics, those only should be received who are absolutely
dangerous, or who, having no friends or resources, may be in the acute stage in
which there is most hope of recovery from medical treatment. Enquiries
were also instituted to ascertain to what extent lunatics had been received in
asylums who would on this principle have been excluded. In many instances,
of course, it would be a measure of extreme harshness to remove lunatics
who under the present practice would have been refused admittance. All that
can be done is to release those whose friends are willing to support them, and
to guard against any laxity of practice in future. Some lunatics were made
over to their friends during the year. Several have been similarly dealt with
since the beginning of the current year, and enquiries are still in progress
regarding others.
2. It has resulted from these measures that the tendency to increase of
the asylum population, which on the 1st January 1870 stood at 746, and on
1st January 1876 at 1,147, has at length received a check. The number in
confinement on the last day of the past year was 1,131, and, as has already been
observed, several releases have since taken place and others are in contemplation.
The total number of admissions was 329, and of re-admissions 37, against 384
and 34 in the previous year. The number of re-admissions, though shown as 37,
was really only 26, as 11 persons re-admitted into the Hazareebagh Asylum
were patients captured shortly after escape. The full effect of the Government
orders is not observable in these returns, as they were not promulgated until
the close of the first quarter. Of the 366 persons admitted and re-admitted,
258 were Hindoos, 92 were Mahomedans, 10 were Christians, and 6 fell under