Annual Reports.
No. 752.
GENERAL DEPARTENT.
Bombay Castle, 13th March 1880.
Letter from the Surgeon-General, Indian Medical Department, No. S.B.-80, dated 2nd
March 1880—Submitting the Annual Administration and Progress Report of the
Insane Asylums in the Bombay Presidency for the year 1879.
RESOLUTION.—This report has been submitted well within the prescribed
date, and Surgeon-General Hunter deserves to be thanked for his promptitude.
It embodies in a concise form all that is interesting in the administration of the
Lunatic Asylums of this Presidency.
2. The accommodation in all the asylums appears to be sufficient except
in the cases of Dhárwár and Ahmedabad. Government will be ready to con-
sider, when circumstances admit of their doing so, proposals for adding to the
buildings at these two places. The total number of lunatics confined in
asylums during the year under review was 841 as against 829 in 1878. There
were 250 admissions and 11 re-admissions as compared with 242 and 14 in the
year preceding. The number discharged was 190, of whom 74 were reported
cured. The daily average number of sick amounted to 31.8 as against 43.0 in
1878, but the death-rate was considerably higher than in the preceding year, the
percentage to average daily number amounting to 11.7 as compared with 6.9 in
1878. The total number of deaths was 68, or 27 more than in the preceding
year. No special reasons are assigned for the increase, which appears to have
been due to natural causes. There was a slight outbreak of cholera in the
Colába Asylum in June, resulting in 6 deaths, while the very virulent fever
which prevailed in Gujarát during the latter part of the year accounts for the
greater mortality in the Ahmedabad Asylum.
3. Statement No. 2 gives details regarding criminal lunatics, of whom
there were 105 under restraint as against 111 in 1878; and in Statement No. 13
are given particulars as to the offences committed by them, from which it
appears that 45 were confined for murder, 15 for other crimes of violence and
35 for theft or house-breaking. Statements 3, 4 and 5 give particulars as to
the sex, religion, race, age, &c., of the patients admitted during the year. A
large proportion, 74 out of 261, consisted of European soldiers.
4. Statements 6 and 7 specify the types, and as far as can be ascertained
the causes of the insanity from which the patients in the asylums are suffer-
ing. Out of 434 cases in which the cause of insanity is known, no less than 140
are attributable to gánja, 47 to spirits, and 8 to opium, or a total of 195, which
forms a proportion of 44.9 per cent. of cases in which intoxicating liquors and
drugs have produced insanity. Disease accounts for a considerable proportion
of the remaining cases, and of the 66 cases which are due to moral causes, 55
are attributable to grief.
5. Paragraph 12 of the Surgeon-General's report and Statement 9 of the
annexures thereto show the financial condition of the asylums during the
year. It appears that they cost to Government a net sum of Rs. 86,358-1-4,
or Rs. 149-2-4 per patient, which is anna 1 and pies 5 a head in excess of last
year's expenditure. The cost of keeping each patient was highest in Dhárwár
and lowest in Hyderabad, as was also the case last year. A total sum of
Rs. 13,373-2-7 was paid into the Treasury on account of paying patients, garden
produce and labour, and the value of articles manufactured in the asylums.
The monthly cost on account of establishment, as shown in Statement 10,
amounted to Rs. 3,387-8-0 as compared with Rs. 3,313-8-0 in 1878, the increase
being due to the Apothecary at Colába having risen a step in rank with
augmented pay. In Statement 11 are given the receipts and expenditure for
the year on account of manufactures. To employ the patients who are capable
of it on any sort of labour is undoubtedly a beneficent measure; and Govern-
B 806—a