MUNICIPAL DEPARTMENT.
MEDICAL.
DARJEELING, THE 6TH MAY 1884.
RESOLUTION.
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The Report on the Lunatic Asylums in Bengal for 1883.
Read again...
The Report for 1882, and the Resolution recorded upon it.
The number of admissions into the asylums, which had fallen in 1882 to
165, the smallest number on record, rose to 209 during the year under review.
The increase was most marked in the case of males, of whom 184 were
admitted against 144 in the previous year, while the number of females
admitted was 25 against 21 in 1882. Criminal lunatics contributed chiefly
towards the increase. The number of re-admissions was the same as in the
preceding year, viz. 23, with this difference that, whereas the number in 1882
was composed of 20 males and 3 females, the re-admissions in 1883 were
of males only. The daily average population of the asylums was 878.67
against 867.12 in the previous year. The lunatics who remained in the
asylums at the close of the year numbered 907, of whom 724 were males and
183 were females.
2. The total number of persons treated for insanity was 1,081, as com-
pared with 1,056 in 1882, and 1,094 in the preceding year. The number of
recoveries was 90 against 83 in 1882, but the number of cases in which
there was an improvement fell from 34 to 27. The percentage of recoveries
on the total number treated for the different kinds of insanity was, in the case
of acute mania, 16.81, chronic mania 6.22, melancholia 4, acute dementia 5.71,
and chronic dementia 1.43. The percentages are lower in every case than the
corresponding proportions in the previous year, except in the case of chronic
mania. These figures, however, are, as has been pointed out by the Surgeon-
General on previous occasions, quite unreliable for scientific purposes, so long as
complete uniformity does not exist in the various asylums in the diagnosis of
different forms of mental disease. In his present Report, he writes:...
" In my last Report I spoke of the uncertainty of nomenclature in the
"hands of different superintendents, who are required to record all cases under
"headings which can be said to afford only a general classification. In 1883
" changes in the superintendence of asylums were unusually frequent, and I
'' conclude, from the entire course of events in that year, that the changes
" affected the nomenclature of disease. Thus, there were 92 new cases of acute
" mania, and a total number of 232 cases treated with 48 cases of recovery and
" improvement with discharge. In 1882 there were 69 admissions and a total
" of 200 cases with 47 cases discharged. Going back to 1881, we find again
"99 admissions and 213 cases in total, with 55 of recovery and improvement.
" Recovery from acute mania within a year is frequent, and it is probable that
" if practice, as to nomenclature, had been the same in the two later years,
" the figures would have been somewhat differently arranged. The same must
" be said of chronic mania. There is fluctuation in the proportion of recoveries
" which points to uncertainty of names." So much at least is certain, that,
taking all kinds of insanity together, the percentage of recoveries on the total
number of cases treated was higher in 1883 than in the previous year.
3. The number of inmates in the Dacca and Cuttack Asylums at times
exceeded the nominal capacity of the wards, but there was no real overcrowding
in either of these institutions, as harmless lunatics were allowed, as in previous
years, to sleep in the verandahs, which are not included in the estimate of
capacity of the buildings.