REPORT
ON THE
LUNATIC ASYLUMS IN BENGAL.
THE Committee having reported on the Medical Institutions of Calcutta,
the proposed improvements at the Medical College Hospital, the supply of medi-
cines to provincial dispensaries, the question of medical education at Sealdah and
some minor points referred to them, next turned their attention to the subject of
Lunatic Asylums. They had been specially asked to report on the system of
accounts and the supply of food; but acting on the general instructions conveyed
in paragraph 3 of the resolution appointing the Committee, they at first proposed
to themselves to report fully on these institutions in the same way as they
had done on the Calcutta Hospitals. A separate memorandum, showing the
working of each asylum, was to be drawn up, and the report was to be based
on the facts contained therein. It was soon found, however, that the new
task was one of much greater difficulty than the former.
As a preliminary to their enquiries, the reports and accounts of all the
asylums since 1862 were carefully gone over and summarised. It was thought
that a comparative view of the general working and of the expenditure of
different institutions would thus easily be obtained: the asylum reports for
years past having being very full and precise, and it being believed that for
some years at least the accounts had been kept on a uniform system.
The Committee have always been alive to the great danger of generalizing
from imperfect data, and to the many sources of fallacy in figures and
especially in averages taken in the gross and without due enquiry into their
real bearing. They have repeatedly called attention to these points, and have
been specially careful not to lay stress on statistics without the most careful
analysis of them. In a recent report they wrote—.''In all comparisons it is
essential that the conditions to be compared should be as nearly as possible
identical;" an apparent truism which it is yet necessary to reiterate, since it
seems to be so often forgotten in practice. The tables of relative expenditure
in different asylums given in the reports are as has been said singularly
precise, and seem to fulfil the above condition; but it soon became apparent
that the preciseness was fallacious, that numerous mistakes had crept into the
tables, that frequent changes of system had rendered it difficult fairly to
compare the figures of one year with those of another, that charges debited in
the accounts of one asylum were ignored in another, that in spite of the rules
introduced in 1872 the system of accounts still varied in different asylums, and
that as a matter of fact the figures given in the annual reports on the working
of the asylums were useless for the purpose of the Committee's enquiry until
they had undergone a very searching analysis. The memorandum on Dullunda
was finished, so far as it could be finished., in the absence of numerous details
required from other asylums ; but these details cannot be furnished, nor can the
memoranda on the other asylums be compiled at all without visiting the asylums
and going over the detailed accounts of each on the spot. The annual reports
of the Surgeon-General do not go into details, and since 1874 have not given
even the gross expenditure for each asylum under the various heads of establish-
ment, diet, contingencies, &c.; while the reports of individual asylums, which
were formerly printed in extenso, and from which much information might be
derived, are no longer printed.
As illustrative of the great difficulties which beset the Committee in
arriving at any just conclusion as to the relative cost of maintaining the
different asylums, the Committee may quote the following examples—numerous