5
Cases of acute mania are, according to my experience, the most common,
arising, as they so often do, from ganja smoking, sudden excitement and special
disease affecting the brain; they are also the most amenable to treatment. All
acute cases are actively treated, One chronic case got well after a severe attack
of intermittent fever, treated successfully with small doses of arsenic. Other
cases are improving, and the use of Bromide of Potassium in large and repeated
doses is found very efficacious in some forms of epilepsy.
Of the two idiots alluded to in paragraph 10 of my last year's report as
recently received without history, and concerning whom I addressed the District
Officers, I am sorry to say I have learnt nothing satisfactory.
15. In Statement VII. there is a large number remaining over from preceding
years, the causes of whose insanity are recorded as " unknown;" and the one man an
old patient readmitted this year is so entered as the particulars of old patients
now available are too meagre for me to form a reliable judgment. Even now the
histories received with new cases from out-stations are often most unsatisfactory,
and it is difficult and often impossible for me at Nagpur to obtain information
which might be readily obtained on the spot whence the people are sent.
With all one's care very positive information is not always available, but I
believe the causes now assigned to be very fairly accurate. The Madras Sowar I
believe to have had sunstroke followed by inflammatory thickening of the mem-
branes of the brain. I have treated him in that belief and he is very much better.
The three cases entered under " grief" are—
(1) a female seduced and deserte 1, and (2 and 3) two men deserted by their
wives.
The case of "anger" is that of a man who murdered his wife on account of
her misconduct ; that under the head "religion" is the religious mendicant who
under excitement injured a temple at Ramtek.
16. Statement VIII.—The year was decidedly an unhealthy one at Nagpur,
especially during the autumn months. The rains were unusually heavy and long
continued, there was a break early in September, followed by a great increase of
fevers, the whole station suffering Eighty-five individual lunatics were treated
during the year, many of them more than once, and some for trivial complaints
or injuries, but there was a total of 55 fevers—all intermittent except one
febricula and 2 remittent. Thirty-one new cases were under treatment for agues
in the months of September and October alone.
The man entered as suffering from muscular rheumatism and transferred
or "discharged otherwise" threw himself into a well and was drowned, and is
entered again under the head of " asphyxia from drowning.''
Of those entered under phthisis pulmonalis one was a criminal, released,
another a woman made over to her friends ; the other two remain in the asylum
without very active symptoms at present.
Of the cases of hemorrhoids returned as " discharged otherwise" one is a man
still in the asylum much relieved but not absolutely cured: in the other case the
man was readmitted under the head of " phthisis." dying from the latter disease.
Two old men, one a criminal aged 55 years according to the register, but
really considerably older, who has been in the asylum since 1867, and another a
non-criminal without friends, by register 68 years of age, in the asylum since
1869, are very feeble and simply remain to die.
The injuries were very slight, some from thorns; two, of the face, from falls
during fits, and others from sudden blows from stones.
17. The deaths during the year were 6,—4 males and 2 females.