this review of what may be effected in restoring the subjects of mental disorder to reason and society, to their homes and occupations, by means of early treatment, it is discouraging to turn to the average result of recoveries on admissions obtained in our County Asylums at large. This average may be taken at 35 per cent., and therefore there will remain of every 100 patients admitted, sixty-five, or, after deducting 10 per cent. of deaths, fifty-five at the end of the year. This number, fifty-five, might fairly be taken to represent the annual per centage of accumulation of the insane in asylums, were the data employed sufficient and satisfactory. But so far as we have yet examined the point, this proportion is larger than a calculation made over a series of years, and may be approximatively stated at 35 per cent. on the admissions.
How great would be the gain, alike to the poor lunatic and to those chargeable with his maintenance, could this rapid rate of accumulation be diminished, by raising that of recoveries, or, what is tantamount to it, by securing to the insane prompt and efficient care and treatment! How does it happen that this desideratum is not accomplished by the asylums in existence? what are the impediments to success discoverable in their organization and management, or in the history of their inmates prior to admission? and what can be done to remedy discovered defects, and to secure the insane the best chances of recovery? Such are some of the questions to be next discussed.
Chap. V. – on the causes diminishing the curability of insanity, and involving the multiplication of chronic lunatics
In the preliminary chapters on the number and increase of the insane in this country, we limited ourselves to determine what that number and that increase were, and entered into no disquisition respecting the causes which have operated in filling our asylums with so many thousands of chronic and almost necessarily incurable patients. Nor shall we now attempt an investigation of them generally, for this has been well done by others, and particularly by the Lunacy Commissioners in their Ninth Report, 1855; but shall restrict ourselves to intimate that the increase of our lunatic population, mainly by accumulation, is due to neglect in past years; to the alteration of the laws requiring the erection of County Asylums for pauper lunatics generally; to the collection and discovery of cases aforetime unthought of and unknown; to the extension of the knowledge of the characters and requirements of the insane both among professional men and the public; and, lastly, to the advantages themselves of asylum accommodation which tend to prolong the lives of the inmates.
Such are among the principal causes of the astounding increase in the number of the insane of late years, relatively to the population of the country, some of which fortunately will in course of time be less productive. Those, however, which we now desire to investigate, are such as directly affect the curability of insanity, either by depriving its victims of early and efficient treatment, or by lessening the efficiency and usefulness of the public asylums.
The history of an insane patient is clearly divisible into three portions: 1st, that before admission into an asylum; 2nd, that of his residence in an asylum; and 3rd, of that after his discharge from it. The last division we have at present nothing to do with; and with reference to the causes influencing his curability, these group themselves under two heads parallel to the first two divisions of the patient’s history; viz. 1, those in operation external to, and 2, those prevailing in, asylums.
The chief cause belonging to this first class is that of delay in submitting recent cases to asylum care and treatment. This delay, as we have sufficiently proved, operates most seriously by diminishing the curability of insanity, and thereby favours the accumulation of chronic lunatics. It takes place in consequence either of the desire of friends to keep their invalid relatives at their homes; or of the economical notions of Poor-Law Officers, who, to avoid the greater cost of asylums, detain pauper lunatics in workhouses. Other causes of incurability and of the accumulation of incurables are found in injudicious management and treatment before admission, and in the transmission of unfit cases to asylums. To discuss the several points suggested in these considerations will require this chapter to be subdivided; and first we may treat of the Detention of Patients in their own homes.
Although the immense importance of early treatment to recent cases of insanity is a truth so well established and so often advocated, yet the public generally fail to appreciate it, and from unfortunate notions of family discredit, from false pride and wounded vanity, delay submitting their afflicted relatives to efficient treatment. Unless the disorder manifest itself by such maniacal symptoms that no one can be blind to its real character, the wealthier classes especially will shut their eyes to the fact they are so unwilling to recognize, and call the mental aberration nervousness or eccentricity; and as they are unwilling to acknowledge the disorder, so are they equally indisposed to subject it to the most effectual treatment, by removing the patient from home, and the exciting influence of friends and surrounding circumstances in general, to a properly organized and managed asylum. Usually a patient with sufficient resources at command, is kept at home as long as possible, at great cost and trouble; and if he be too much for the control of his relatives and servants, attendants are hired from some Licensed House to manage him; the only notion prevailing in the minds of his friends being that means are needed to subdue his excitement and to overcome his violence. There are, in fact, no curative agencies at work around him, but on the contrary, more or fewer conditions calculated to exalt his furor, to agitate and disquiet his mind, and to aggravate his malady. The master of the house finds himself checked in his will; disobeyed by his servants; an object of curiosity, it may be, of wonder and alarm; and sadly curtailed in his liberty of action. The strange attendants forced upon him are to be yielded to only under passionate protests, and probably after a struggle. In all ways the mental disorder is kept up if not aggravated, and every day the chances of recovery are diminished. Perhaps matters may grow too bad for continued residence at home, or the malady have lasted so long, that the broken-up state of family and household can no longer be tolerated, and a transfer from home is necessitated. Yet even then removal to an asylum, – the only step which can hold out a fair prospect of recovery, is either rejected as quite out of the question, or submitted to usually after still longer delay, – a “trial” being made of a lodging with a medical man or other person, probably with an asylum attendant. By this plan certainly the patient is saved from the presence and excitement of his family, and placed under altered conditions, calculated to exercise in some respects a salutary influence on his mind; still many others are wanting, and no guarantee is attainable of the manner in which he is treated; for as a single patient, and as is usually the case, restrained without certificates, he is almost invariably unknown to the Commissioners, and virtually unprotected, even though a medical man be paid to attend him occasionally. At last, however, except for a few, the transfer to the asylum generally becomes inevitable, and too often too late to restore the disordered reason; and years of unavailing regret fail to atone for time and opportunity lost.
The same unwillingness to subject their insane friends to asylum care and treatment pervades, moreover, the less wealthy classes, and even the poorer grades of the middle class of society. Madness, to their conceptions likewise, brings with it a stigma on the family, and its occurrence must, it is felt, be kept a secret. Hence an asylum is viewed as an evil to be staved off as long as possible, and only resorted to when all other plans, or else the pecuniary means, are exhausted. If it be the father of the family who is attacked, the hope is, that in a few days or weeks he may resume his business or return to his office, as he might after ordinary bodily illness, without such loss of time as shall endanger his situation and prospects, and without the blemish of a report that he has been the inmate of a madhouse. If it be the wife, the hope is similar, that she will shortly be restored to her place and duties in her family. Should progress be less evident than desired, a change away from home will probably be suggested by the medical attendant, and at much expense and trouble carried out. But too frequently, alas! the hopes are blighted and the poor sufferer is at length removed with diminished chance of cure to an asylum.
For the poorer members of the middle class, and for many moving in a somewhat higher circle of society, whom the accession of mental disorder
