No. A.
FROM SURGEON H. C. CUTCLIFFE, F.R.C.S.,
Officiating Civil Surgeon, Dacca, and Superintendent, Lunatic Asylum, Dacca,
To H. B. BUCKLE, ESQ., C.B.,
Officiating Deputy Inspector-General of Hospitals, Dacca Circle.
Dated Dacca, the 28th January 1871.
SIR,
I HAVE the honor to submit, for transmission through the ordinary channels to
the Government of Bengal, this my annual report on the lunatic asylum at Dacca for the
year 1870.
2. Population.—During the year 1870, 77 patients were admitted into the asylum.
Of these, 72 were cases admitted for the first time, and 5 were cases re-admitted. On the
31st December 1869 there were 229 patients in the asylum. These, with the 77 admitted
during the year, show that the total number of patients treated during the year 1870
amounted to 306. Table No. 2 is an abstract from the annual return of 1870. The
daily average number of immates was 222.57, which number was less by 9.19 than that of
1869. Of the 306 patients treated, 34 were discharged as cured, 10 were transferred to
friends, 11 escaped, 41 died, and 210 remained on the 1st January 1871. Of the 77 patients
admitted during the year, 18 were criminal lunatics detained by orders of the Government,
and 59 were non-criminal lunatics detained under the provisions of Act XXXVI. of 1858.
The ratio per cent. of cases "entirely cured," together with those transferred to their friends,
was 14.37. In 1869 it was 11.21, and in 1868 17.13.
In my last year's report I mentioned that the lunatic asylum at Dacca had become some-
what choked with incurable cases, and to this cause I attributed in part the small number of
cases discharged as "entirely cured" during that year. With a view to illustrate some
peculiar features connected with the population of the asylum, I have had prepared table No. 4,
from which it will be seen that 7 were suffering from imbecility, 7 from idiotcy, 3 from general
paralysis, and 111 from chronic dementia, giving a total of 128 out of 306 patients, or 41.83
per cent., almost, if not quite beyond all hope of cure. I do not mean to say that all cases
which are included under the heading Chronic Dementia are absolutely hopeless; but
confining myself to those cases of chronic dementia now in the Dacca asylum, I find that the
average duration of residence of each case in the asylum has been 4½ years; and this, coupled
with the fact that great care has been taken in placing none under this particular heading, but
those in which loss or feebleness of the mental faculties was well marked, warrants the conclu-
sion that 41.83 per cent. of the total population are suffering from those forms of insanity in
which cures are seldom effected. Indeed, the proportion thus afflicted will appear far larger
when the cases of chronic mania are taken into consideration. Of these cases, there were 82 or
26.79 per cent. of the total population. The average duration of each of these cases was 3
years 11 months and 17.98 days, and amongst them there are many on the border line
between mania and dementia, to which they have long been drifting. These data are not
sufficiently exact to admit of any definite or positive statements being made with reference to
the number of curable cases in the asylum, but nevertheless go far to show that the proportion
of person discharged as " entirely cured'' must be necessarily small. The causes which chiefly