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No. 5.
FROM
SURGEON MAJOR ARTHUR PAYNE, M. D.,
Supdt. of Asylums at the Presidency,
To
THE SECY., INSPR. GENL., MEDICAL DEPT.
Bhowanipore, the 15th January 1869.
SIR,
I have the honor of submitting herewith the Annual Returns of the Bhowanipore
Lunatic Asylum for the year 1868.
There were 62 admissions during the year and 1 re-admission against 44 in the preceding
year. Intemperance is the cause assigned in 11 cases, but this must be accepted with the
reservation which I have indicated in former reports, as it is always doubtful whether excess
has not been due in any case to the loss of self-control which is one of the earliest effects
of incipient madness. In 9 instances hereditary transmission has been traceable. This
number is probably far from representing the cases in which the cause has been actually present,
but the impossibility of ascertaining the point in the majority of cases forbids any further
assignment of the cause. Sunstroke and climatic disease have preceded insanity in four cases;
ill-treatment in two; and excessive study, grief, and childbirth, have each produced a single
case. In the rest the cause has not been ascertainable.
The chronic character of almost all the cases admitted is worthy of remark as in former
years. A single case of acute mania appears, and in it the disorder was of hereditary kind,
so that the appropriateness of the name is doubtful even here. Mania, that is general
insanity with more or less excitement, greatly predominates over other forms of derangement.
Melancholia is rarely seen, and though dementia is occasionally met with in the asylum
as a primary mental disorder following climatic fever, it generally appears as a secondary
result of mania.
Twelve patients were discharged cured, five were so far improved as to admit of their
being transferred to the care of friends, and seventeen were despatched to Europe as ordinary
invalids; twenty-eight were sent to Europe as lunatics. It should be observed, however, that
from this record of cures is excluded all those which are subjected to, that which is confessedly
the most powerful curative measure at command, viz., removal from the country. For the
reasons given in former reports, I am unable to state numerically the results which attended
the despatch of patients in 1868, but from such items of information as I have received, it is
evident that they have been as satisfactory as in other years.
The mortality was, as usual, very small, and the notes appended to the cases will show
that they arose from causes which were in no case preventible in the Institution.
In my last report I mentioned the damage which the buildings had sustained from the
Cyclone of 1867. This has since appeared to have been much greater than was then known,
and the effect of the heavy rains of 1868 on the foundations has been to reduce the centre
building to a state of dilapidation. The several barrack ranges too are greatly injured, and
their decayed condition has become daily more and more manifest. It is not necessary to enter
more fully into particulars here, as the reconstruction of the asylum has been pronounced ab-
solutely necessary by the Officers of the Public Works Department, and plans are now under
consideration. Meanwhile, all works of petty repair and construction, including the restoration
of the recreation shed in the garden, have been suspended.