Resolution on the Report on the Tezpur Lunatic Asylum for 1883.
Extract from the Proceedings of the Chief Commissioner of Assam, in the General Depart-
ment, No. 2,735, dated 30th April 1884..
READ—
The Annual Report on the Tezpur Lunatic Asylum for the year 1883. Also letter No. 295,
dated the 25th March 1883, from the Deputy-Surgeon-General of the Eastern Frontier
District to the Secretary to the Chief Commissioner, forwarding the Report.
RESOLUTION.
The report on this Asylum is due from the Deputy-Surgeon-General on the 1st Febru-
ary. It was received in the Secretariat in manuscript on the 26th March only. It is
explained that it was necessary to return the report to Dr. Campbell for correction, and
Dr. Eteson also represents that the statistics have become " cumbersome and unwieldy
from the practice of accumulating the figures of each year since the Asylum was
established." The form of the Annual Statements I. and II. appended to the report
was prescribed in the Government of India Resolution in the Home Department,
No. 7—419-428, dated the 31st August 1874, and it provides for the statistics of the
ten years preceding the year under report being shown. No difficulty should be found in
entering these statistics in Statements I. and II. It is not, however, necessary for the
Superintendent to give in the body of his report detailed figures for each year during
which the Asylum has been in existence, as Dr. Campbell has done, and in future reports
a comparison of the figures of the year under report with the figures of the preceding
year, and with an average of the previous five years, and ultimately of the previous ten
years, will answer all purposes.
2. There were 61 patients in the Asylum on the 1st January 1883. During the
year there were 27 new admissions and 5 re-admissions (3 of which were re-admissions
of relapsed patients and 2 were captures of escaped patients), or 32 persons admitted in
all, against 22 in 1882; 1 patient escaped, 9 were discharged cured, 2 were made over
to friends, and 14 died during the year, and there remained on the 31st December 67
patients, of whom 49 were men and 18 were women. The daily average strength was
63*76 in 1883, against 56*53 in 1882.
The mortality of the year was lamentable; 9 deaths were due to the epidemic of
cholera in June last, but there were also 5 deaths from general causes. There were but 3
deaths in 1882, and 7 in 1881. The daily average number of sick was 3*13, among an
average strength of 63*76; this rate is not remarkably high, but the Deputy-Surgeon-
General notices the large proportion of grave diseases indicative of former chronic
innutrition, and this helps to explain the high rate of mortality.
3. Dr. Eteson expresses surprise at the fact that in only one of 18 cases in the
Asylum in which the causes of insanity are said to have been ascertained is the loss
of reason attributed to opium. The whole population of the Tezpur Asylum is, perhaps,
too small, containing as it does only one-tenth of the insane persons in the Assam Valley
districts as they were returned in the Census of 1881, to afford a sound basis for
generalisations, especially where, as in this instance, the facts which are said to have been
ascertained relate to a portion only of the Asylum population. As, however, was noticed
in Chapter XI. of the Assam Census Report of 1881, it is not the case that the districts
of the Province in which most opium, ganja, and country spirits are consumed are those
which show the highest ratios of insanity. Of the two nearly equal populations of the
in 1882-83, tho snrmA vaiwy consumed Assam Valley and the Surma Valley, the former con-
55 maunds, and tlio Assam Valley districts
1 « ,
j •
1
•
J_II
1
i,658 maunus..f opium.
sumes thirty times as much opium as the latter popula-
tion; but in the Census of 1881 the proportion of insanes per 10,000 of the population
has been returned as 3*1 in the Surma Valley, against 2*1 in the Assam Valley.
4. The Chief Commissioner has been glad to observe that much has been done
during the year for the greater comfort of the patients. Of the improvements which have
been effected, and which are enumerated by Dr. Eteson, the most important are the two
new barracks which have been built ; the digging of the tank was begun but not
completed during the year.
The visitors decided, after consulting the authorities of the Presidency Asylum, who
stated that padded cells were unknown in the Presidency Asylum, that it was unneces-
sary to have padded cells.