Reports of Lunatic Asylums, published during 1857 and 1858

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Abstract
The pressure of other matter has caused us, with regret, to postpone for a longer period than usual our customary analysis of asylum reports. If the mass of these reports do not present any great amount of that which is actually novel; if, indeed, after having carefully analyzed them for several successive years, we find them going over much the same ground; this is a circumstance only to be expected from the reports emanating from institutions of a like character, whose aims, objects, and constitution are alike, and whose experience and difficulties are therefore likely to be closely assimilated. We do, indeed, find that in different years the superintendents of different asylums go over much the same ground on such subjects of common interest, as the admission of patients in a late and incurable stage of insanity, or, in a hopeless condition of bodily disease and decay; the overcrowding of wards; the deficiency of water supply; the large proportion of patients afflicted with suicidal propensity; the relapses occasioned by trials and hardships undergone after discharge; notices of the routine management of asylums in providing the inmates with means of occupation and of recreation, and other similar subjects, needful, perhaps, for the information of that lay public to which these reports are for the most part addressed, but not so for that of their professional brethren. If these and other matters, which we may call stock subjects for reports, occupy a very large space in their pages, it is not surprising that in each successive year we should find it more difficult to discover in them a large amount of that which is worthy of permanent record. We know, by experience, how difficult it is year after year, to discover new subjects for even a brief report; how difficult it is to address a lay audience upon matters of medical interest, or to give an account of one's stewardship in a manner which shall be just, without being self-laudatory; a difficulty which constantly increases as the matters, which are suitable for such an address, become exhausted. If, after several periodical notices of these reports, the stock subjects have been commented upon and exhausted, we must hold ourselves excused for going over the same ground in commenting upon the report of one asylum which has already been traversed in the previous report of some other asylum.

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