18
ANNUAL REPORT ON LUNATIC ASYLUMS.
I think his work should be lightened considerably in the steward's department,
leaving him real leisure, where he now has not any, to follow up his professional
work. If his responsibility is not lightened his work cannot be delegated with
safety; and if much of his work can be delegated and as I firmly maintain ought
to be, his responsibility should be altogether removed. He should not be called
upon to buy dholl and rice, to examine vouchers for the supply of blankets, and to
trace out where a pair of slippers has gone, but if his responsibility is not removed
over details such as these; his duty will be to constantly scrutinize innumerable
petty details, find out and correct petty errors, until what I may call the distinctive
characteristics of his mind from the medical side, are put aside more or less com-
pletely to take up those of a clerk, store-keeper and jail warder. This will always
make the work of superintendence in the Madras Asylum so irksome and with its
present size so unmanageable, that unless the whole system be altered, I cannot
believe that any Medical Officer can either be happy or properly useful, considering
his mental training and qualifications, while so over-harrassed with such innumer-
able petty vexations."
" Assistant Surgeon Judge.—Of this officer, I have only to speak in praise:
without his assistance, it would be, I think, impossible to carry on the work of the
Asylum. Much of his time is taken up in watching numberless details and seeing
that the orders of the Superintendent are carried out both by European and native
attendants. He has the unpleasant task of constantly finding fault, and bringing
before the Superintendent the innumerable petty lapses on the part of attendants,
cooks, toties, in short of all the establishment, and of endless small details connected
with patients in the various sections. To a new Superintendent, or to one like
myself not conversant with native languages, his services are indispensable. While
speaking of him only in praise, I think that this carries with it a condemnation of
the system on which the Asylum has been worked, that he should have become so
necessary, as to be almost indispensable. The evil has, at least partly, arisen from
the constant change in Superintendents, who, in a short tenure of the appointment,
have not had time to become thoroughly conversant with the very large mass of
detail involved in the Asylum management; to do this thoroughly, I believe from
one to two years necessary, as for example in the submission of the annual adminis-
tration report both complex and numerous details have to be compiled, digested and
amended, while current work is being done, which at present at all events fully
occupies the time of Superintendent, Assistant Surgeon and steward. With a
Superintendent who is inexperienced, with either of these men ill, there would
be the greatest difficulty in carrying out the work of the Asylum management;
while should both be ill or away together, I believe it would be an impossibility,
and there is no one in reserve and no one in training to supply their place, each
standing alone in his own work."
" Steward.—We have one steward, though he is assisted by Mr. McKenzie,
an assistant, of whom I speak further on and he is, in my opinion, overworked.
Year by year the mass of details to be watched and checked with reference to money,
clothing, feeding, expenses of patients as a whole, of patients in particular, of what
they eat, of what each item costs, &c, &c, has steadily increased. It is true a
store-keeper has now been put on, and not before he was absolutely required, but
the underlying difficulty still remains the same, that the steward is overworked,
has long been overworked, and so far as I can judge will in due time be again
overworked until such a point is reached that a break-down is imminent in the
working in this department, unless care be taken that if the work by degrees
increase, due increase in establishment is allowed long before such a difficulty is
imminent, though I do not think this has been borne in mind sufficiently in the
past."
"Assistant Steward.—He has, at the same time he is supervising kitchen
management as well as cooking, to be compiling figures from diet sheets, bringing
up daily issues of extras in his account—a very long one—and superintending
milking going on outside the kitchen. He is supervising three cooks, two female
servants (water woman and one female cook) and one special cook paid by private
patients collectively—and five to seven insane people who are helping in kitchen