I have before me the statistics of the Siegburg Asylum, thanks to Dr. Ripping, from its opening to its close; and I find that the recoveries during the first twenty-five years amounted to forty-two per cent., and during the twenty-five years ending with the year 1877, they were forty-six per cent., thus showing an increase of four per cent. in the more recent period. As this asylum, now closed, has admitted curable cases only, these figures are among the few valuable statistics which I have been able to procure.
I have not succeeded in obtaining satisfactory comparative results by adopting, in the mixed asylums of England and Wales, the plan of working the recoveries, not on the total admissions, but on those only deemed curable; but to explain this fully would involve me in more detail than the occasion warrants.
I would add that in the United States, where reasons have been assigned why the statistics of asylums exhibit apparently fewer recoveries in the later than the earlier period of the last forty years, Dr. Pliny Earle has done good service by the remarkable contribution he has made to the question of the curability of insanity,[312] corroborating, at the same time, the somewhat unfavourable conclusion as to permanent recovery which Dr. Thurnam, in a work which will always be a Pharos to guide those who sail on waters where so many are shipwrecked, arrived at, after a laborious examination of the after history of cases discharged recovered from the York Retreat. It is likewise anything but reassuring to find that, out of the total number of lunatics under care in England and Wales, there are at this moment only 3592 who are deemed curable.[313]
Such, gentlemen, is my Retrospect of the Past. Meagre it has necessarily been, though occupying more of your time than I could have wished, but the number of subjects demanding reference must be my excuse.
We found, at the commencement of the period we have traversed, the accommodation provided for the insane scandalously insufficient, and the condition of many of the existing asylums calling loudly for a radical reform.
We witness to-day, throughout the kingdom, a large number of institutions in admirable working order, reflecting the greatest credit upon their superintendents and committees.
We found a wholly inadequate system of inspection.
We witness now a Board of Commissioners, which, without forfeiting the good will of the superintendents, carefully inspects the asylums throughout the provinces as well as the metropolis—as carefully and thoroughly, at any rate, as the same number of men originally appointed to examine into the condition of some 20,000 patients can fulfil a like duty for above 70,000.
We found a resolute attempt being made to carry out and extend the humane system of treatment inaugurated nearly half a century before in France and England.