18
LUNATIC ASYLUMS IN BENGAL.
Sickness.
Returns uncertain.
25. Sickness.—Statement No. 2 shows the number of daily sick—actual and in relation
to strength. The figures of 1871 show an increase on the previous year, but this is owing in
a great measure, as explained by Dr. Payne in his report, to the greater care and minuteness
now exercised in the registration of sickness. In accordance with the instructions issued in
the circular reproduced in the Appendix, all cases of bodily disease will be registered and
returned in future in accordance with the official nomenclature of diseases. These returns
will be comparable with those of other hospitals and communities.
General manage-
ment.
Industry.
Asylum.
Dullunda ...
Dacca ...
Patna ...
Cuttack ...
Moydapore ...
Total ...
Daily
strength.
335.12
213.40
211.39
44.61
26.21
830.73
No. em-
ployed.
313.66
171.99
172.3
35.18
23 44
716.57
Per cent.
93.59
80.59
81.50
78.86
89.43
86.25
26. Management.—Industry continues to constitute the principal feature of the manage-
ment of asylums. The statement on the margin
shows how large a proportion of the inmates
are usefully employed. The reports appended
detail the modes of employment, and the
accounts annexed to these represent the money
value of the work done. The system is more a
voluntary than a coercive one, and leaves
nothing to be desired. No effort seems to be
made, however, to provide lunatics with recrea-
tion or amusement.
Mechanical
res-
traint.
Proper limits of its
employment.
Restraint continues to be practised in the
Dullunda and Patna asylums by means of ligatures, bags, belts, chains, and handcuffs. In the
large Dacca Asylum, Dr. Wise contrives to manage the lunatics without mechanical restraint,
and it is also found unnecessary in Cuttack and Moydapore. There can be no question that,
except in rare cases, when it is necessary to prevent the lunatic from meddling with sores or
wounds, restraint in any form is unnecessary, and that its adoption as an asylum practice incul-
cates and maintains among attendants an entirely false and wrong notion as to how lunatics
should be treated. It is impossible to dissociate, except in the surgical cases alluded to, when
its beneficial intention is plainly apparent, the idea of coercion or punishment from the imposi-
tion of restraint, and such an idea is prone to govern all the details of an institution in which
restraint is a recognized element in the management of mad people. The imposition of manual
restraint is by no means a necessary alternative, and is seldom found requisite in asylums
where the idea and practice of restraint have been abolished.
Alternatives.
Exercise and occupation are far better methods of quelling noisy or violent manifesta-
tions than restraint; and the utmost liberty consistent with safety, and the practice of mild
measures of suasion and guidance, are found to be more efficient repressives of excitement
than the methods of coercion, which have very properly been set aside in all asylums
conducted on humane modern principles. I am clearly of opinion that too much resort is had
to restraint in the management of the Dullunda and Patna asylums, and I shall cause the
Superintendents to be addressed with a view to the disuse of this practice in all but very
exceptional cases.
Finances.
Industrial funds.
Proposal to credit
these to Govern-
ment.
27. Finances.—In the resolution on the report for 1870, I was asked to report whether
any portion of the so-called industrial funds are " credited to general revenues, or in any way
expended on the maintenance of lunatics." I ascertained and reported that no monies
realized on account of the products of lunatic labour have hitherto been placed to the credit of
Government, but have been held in the hands of superintendents, expended at their discretion,
and devoted mainly to the provision of appliances for the development of industry and the
purchase of raw material. In this way, though not actually credited to the State, these
funds have effected a saving of public money, because all the expenditure which was thus
incurred must otherwise have been defrayed by Government; for the objects of it are necessary
elements in asylum management. In my communications on this subject, I urged that it would
add greatly to the simplicity of asylum accounts if all monies realized in this or in any other
way were credited to general revenues, and expenditure were considered and regulated accord-
ing to the needs of the institution rather than the amount of money available in a fund
of this description. I further pointed out that this was the practice in the pauper asylums of