DULLUNDA LUNATIC ASYLUM.
25
aid to administration, and should be kept within due limits, but never entirely removed.
This maxim was laid down years ago in Europe; I believe, but am not sure, that
Dr. Conolly was its author.
Criminals.
11. Criminal Lunatics.—The number of criminal lunatics is still very high, with all the
attendant evils before described. In all 106 were treated, 20 were discharged or transferred,
and five died. There remained 81 at the close of the year, and the mean daily number was 80.
Buildings.
12. Buildings.—There have been no additions to, or important alterations during the
year, in the buildings of the asylum. On resuming my duties I found myself under the new
disposal of manufacture-funds, without means of keeping in repair some expensive but
necessary buildings which had been erected in former years from profits, but for which
provision could not be made in a manufacture-budget. The kitchen and dining-house
were the most important of these. I made application therefore that these buildings might
be entered on the books of the Public Works Department, and in future be maintained by
that department. This has been arranged. The buildings have been surveyed and some
necessary repairs executed, but the design of the dining-house and kitchen has not yet been
completed for want of funds.
Water-supply.
13. Water-supply.—The Medical and Public Works Departments were a good deal
exercised in 1873 by the pressing scarcity of water. It is evident that there are peculiar
difficulties connected with the soil on which the asylum is built. The tanks empty themselves
rapidly by percolation, and the wells, after daily pumping, refill too slowly for the wants of the
people. The executive engineer has shown a warm interest in the work of remedying this,
and so much has been done that it may be fairly hoped that little more is needed. The
means of female-bathing was first provided from a large well by an excellent arrangement for
lifting water into a raised iron tank, which at the same time supplied a shower bath and
reservoir for epileptics; and if only the well can be so altered as to ensure its refilling in a
night, which Mr. Stewart thinks possible, the object will be effected. Next, the men's bathing-
tank was taken in hand in the manner originally proposed by the executive engineer. A
large pipe has been buried ten feet deep in the land between Tolly's Nullah and the tank
crossing the Mauritius Emigration Depôt, and being duly furnished with valves will, it is
supposed, pour three or four feet of water every fortnight into the tank. Percolation is
surprisingly rapid here, and if the supply is not sufficiently maintained the tank must be
deepened.
Drinking-water no longer causes trouble; it is brought in a cart by a gang of lunatics
from the nearest municipal hydrant, a measure carried out under departmental sanction
during the year.
General
management.
14. General management.—The industrial occupation of lunatics has taken its usual
prominent place in the general management of the asylum in 1873. The daily average number
employed was 320. The causes of disability in the remainder are set forth in table No. 17.
Use of drugs and
stimulants.
Drugs have been but little used, for I have found that for a large majority of noisy, restless
persons, a stimulant in the form of Commissariat rum, as a very effectual and innocuous
remedy, is greatly to be preferred. Special cases require morphia, digitalis, hydrocyanic
acid, chloral, bromide of potassium, &c., but their number has been diminished under the
simpler means. Current electricity is coming into use in European asylums for certain
purposes, and it has produced some rather surprising results at Dullunda during the year,
but the machinery at present available in the Medical Store Department here is primitive
and imperfect.
Mechanical
restraint.
15. On the subject of mechanical restraint I have submitted a long special report, and
stated fully the reasons which have led me to depart from the ideal doctrine of absolute
non-restraint, as they have led many of my contemporaries in England to depart from it,
undeterred by the fact that national vanity was committed to the maintenance of a system
which had come to be regarded as the characteristic of English asylums. I will not
trouble you again with the detailed opinions of others on the strong vital facts of my own
experience, which have shown me what is best for my patients, nor enlarge on the fallacies
which have been found in very many cases to underlie the wants of those who have continued
to repudiate restraint, but will confine myself to transcribing from the pages of the British
Medical Journal (November 11th, 1873,) a brief summary of advancing opinion in Europe on
the question. The Editor writes:—" In the opinion of the Edinburgh Medical Journal, although
England may justly claim the merit of having done much to introduce a more humane
treatment of the insane, there is no chance of our insular notion about totally dispensing with
restraint being adopted either on the Continent of Europe or in America; while of late years
in Great Britain there has been a steady and powerful reaction against the extreme views of the
non-restraint men. Superintendents like Dr. Lauder Lindsay of the Perth, Dr. Yellowlees
of the Glamorgan, and Dr. Murray Lindsay of the Derby asylums, have gained the distinc-
tion of boldly stating views which were getting every year more general and more decided,
that the utter abrogation of mechanical restraint in all cases of mania was a notion only fit
for doctrinaires who do not understand the real exigencies of asylum superintendence. In a
notice in Allgemeine Zeits Chrift (1871, page 604,) of Dr. Kellogg's report on English asylums
D