CH. XII.] REPORT OF THE INDIAN HEMP DRUGS COMMISSION, 1893-94. 233
information is available, and this insistence on ascribing a cause where reasonable
presumption as to cause is so rarely possible, have had a powerful influence in
rendering the statistics untrustworthy. The same tendency is seen at work in
other provinces. In Madras the effect of the remark in paragraph 5 of the
Government Resolution on the Lunatic Asylum Report for 1890 stigmatizing
the Calicut Asylum as "the worst " in respect to the average of unknown causes
and of the Surgeon-General's Circular No. 12, dated 28th September 1891
(issued in consequence), is clearly in evidence. In Bengal, Surgeon-Lieutenant-
Colonel Meadows, of Berhampur, says: "We assign cause too often ourselves:
it is insisted on; and we are constrained to enter cause before it has been
properly ascertained." Surgeon-Major Baker, of Rangoon, says: "I think that
officers are under the impression that it looks as if they were not zealous if they
do not find a cause." Brigade-Surgeon-Lieutenant-Colonel Gaffney, of Jubbul-
pore, says: "I think that there is a tendency to assign causes too readily;" and
he intimates his concurrence in a strong protest made by Surgeon-Major-Gen-
eral Rice when Civil Surgeon of Jubbulpore in 1880 against this tendency. In
Assam, Mr. Driberg, Commissioner of Excise, says: "If a man (policeman) does
not enter cause, I know by experience that the District Superintendent of Police
gets a slip telling him to send a more experienced man, or fine this man for
carelessness." The remarks made in 1880 by Dr. Rice, now Surgeon-General
with the Government of India, in reference to an unfavourable comment in the
Chief Commissioner's review of the report for 1879, may be quoted: "I think
it is of doubtful value," he said, "to set down everything told in this way as
if it were reasonably true. If these returns are ever to be made use of, it would
be better to assign only such alleged causes as have some pretensions to being
correct, omitting altogether those which are nothing more than mere conjectures.
Even if a great number go unclassified, it is better so than that doubtful causes
should be assigned."
Asylum statistics quite untrust-
worthy.
518. There is one class of cases which seems at first sight to differ from the
rest, the cases in which lunatics charged with crime
have been acquitted on the ground of insanity.
Surgeon-Major McKay, of Nagpur, says: "In criminal cases the cause is general-
ly taken from the judgment of the Court." This statement is apparently too
strong. The Commission have had to examine the records and papers in the
cases of many criminal lunatics. In the majority of cases the Judge is found
to be content with the evidence of the Civil Surgeon as to the fact of insanity,
and to consider it unnecessary to make any inquiry as to cause. In such
cases the information sent to the asylum authorities is precisely of the same
character as that furnished in non-criminal cases. It is very rare indeed that any
evidence as to cause appears in the evidence tendered in Court, and still more
rare for the Judge to discuss the cause. For all practical purposes, the remarks
above made regarding the untrustworthy character of the information supplied
to the Superintendents, and of the asylum statistics as to cause based thereon,
apply to all classes of cases.
Dacca Asylum no exception.
519. Although these statistics have been discussed seriously from year to
year, they have not been much used as the basis of
measures of ganja administration except in the
case of Burma. In this case the Commission found that the measures taken
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