Lunacy in Scotland
251 Art. VI.?LUNACY IN SCOTLAND. Tiie Twenty-second Annual Report of the Commissioners in Lunacy for Scotland.
The Annual Reports of the Lunacy Commissioners are among the most valuable contributions to the literature of insanity; they, in effect, provide the material information by which the working theorist is enabled to develope his views, and on the basis of which the practical physician can determine his treatment. They have, indeed, become an essential part of the alienist’s resources; without them he would be at a loss in many hours of trying emergency; their cessation would be a fatal bar to general progress in the therapeutics of insanity. It is, therefore, a matter for much congratulation that these reports are of the excellent nature they are, and of that one now more particularly under notice, we can speak in terms of unqualified praise. In every respect it is admirable; exhaus- tive in detail, rich in experience, historically complete also, it presents the reader with an invaluable resume of the actual condition of the country of Scotland in regard to its lunatic population, and the means available for their cure and improve- ment.
The Commissioners in Lunacy for Scotland entered on their duties in 1858, at which time the insane registered population amounted to 5,823 persons. There are now on the official books 9,624 names, and an analysis of the numbers, their clas- sification and distribution, reveals many facts of importance and interest in connection with the growth and spread of madness in its several forms. The two classes of patients, private and pauper, have varied within two-and-twenty years since 1858, only in the direction of a steady increase, numerically, except that the paupers placed in private dwellings have decreased to the amount of 369. The explanation of this considerable change is afforded in the existence of a parliamentary grant towards the cost of their maintenance, and the assistance thus afforded towards their being placed under proper care in establishments. There is traceable a connection between this and the increasing readiness generally exhibited to submit to asylum treatment?a very important influence in its bearing on the actual increase in the number of insane persons under the official cognizance of the Commissioners. This increase, after all deductions, is a net total of 3,801, or 65 per cent, for the period since 1858?a startling fact in relation with the increase of population during the same period, this being only in the ratio of 20 per cent., were it not for the assurances held out that it is a consequence of the better appreciation of the benefits of asylum treatment. The report considers, in great detail, all the facts bearing on these changes, and then discusses the progress made during the year in the various institutions for the insane throughout the country. ^ We regret that the pressure on our space forbids a lengthy notice of this most important volume in our present number, but we shall return to it in our next issue. W^e will only add that it reflects the highest credit on the Commissioners to whose industry it is due.
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