Annual Report of the lrustees and Superintendent of the State Lunatic Hospital of Pennsylvania
Harrisburg: 1876.
From the report before us we find that during the year ending September 1876, there were 167 males and 70 females admitted to the asylum; the number discharged during that period being 167?males 96, females 71. Of this number 38 were restored, 41 improved, 55 were stationary, and 33 died. The first patient admitted into the hospital was in 1851, and since that time and the present (1876) 3,988 patients have been admitted, and 3,572 discharged. Of the latter 859 have been restored, 847 improved, 1,176 are stationary, and 663 have died. Of the number restored only a small number had subsequent attacks, and some only after a long term of years. From the experience of the medical officers of this hospital it would appear that many more recent cases are now placed under medical treatment in the earliest stages of the disease than was formerly the case. The building was originally designed for 300 patients, but we learn that 416 are now under care, and at times the wards have been ciowded by a much larger number. Certainly the honour of the establishment of the first hospital for the insane in America belongs to Penn- sylvania, and a noble work is in progress to remedy past neglect.
Restraint of any kind is rarely resorted to, and this in general simply consists in the confinement of the hands; although, of course, in some exceptional instances, for saving life and preventing exhaustion, the patient mus be ^ept in bed in a horizontal position ; and we quite agree that light forms of mechanical restraint are infinitely preferable to the manual force of four or six persons.
We are glad to hear that ? pictures and other sources of attraction, libraries, musical instruments, and means of amuse- ment are placed wherever they can be of the greatest advantage, and be most highly appreciated.
This report concludes with a number of interesting tables, of which the following subjects are the chief:? Occupation of those admitted. Their social condition. Assigned causes of insanity. Form of disease. Duration of attack. Causes of disease of those recovered. Causes of death. The pamphlet is well worth a careful perusal.
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