The experience of the Kent Asylum is similar. The age of eleven persons admitted in 1853 averaged 64, and twelve were from 72 to 75. "In many of these the malady was simply decay of mind, or was due to apoplectic seizures, and attended by palsy."
In the Report for 1857-1858, Dr. Huxley goes more at large into the question of unfitness for asylum admission, and the vigour and clearness of his remarks induces us to quote them at length. He observes:--"It seems difficult to understand on what principle patients are sometimes sent. One man, for an intemperate threat uttered under considerable provocation, is hastened off to the asylum. He can then only be deemed insane in a constructive sense, and in reliance on the undoubted good faith of the whole proceedings for his removal. He is seen to be sane; he remains so, and merely awaits the next discharging-day. In the interval he has had time to reflect on the danger of uncontrolled speech; but perhaps he and his family ought not to have incurred the reproach (as it is held) of insanity in the blood. Perhaps, also, he ought not to have swelled the list of persons insane, adding his mite to the evidence which supports the general belief in an actual increase of disorders of the mind.
"Again, the facility with which a drunken prostitute finds admission and re-admission is astonishing. The delirium, rather than insanity proper, produced by excessive drinking, has, indeed, some alarming modes of expression; but it is a different thing from true mental derangement, and is transient, the patient being generally nearly all right again on arrival. I confess to a feeling which grudges to such patients the benefits of an asylum and association with the inmates who are truly unfortunate. Their detention is wholly unsatisfactory; it leads to nothing. Long or short, it proves no warning against a return to former bad courses; whilst the presence of people (I do not call them patients) of this sort seriously injures the interior comfort of the wards. Ought such cases to swell the returns of lunacy? Then, in estimating the supposed growth of insanity among the people, let the fact be remembered, that here is one contributing element, which was not represented until of late years. Once again, the extent to which strongly-marked senility is now made the reason for admission to the asylum is, I think, unprecedented. To grow childish, wilful, and intractable; to lose memory, and forget the good habits of a life; to take no note of times and seasons; to wake by night and be restless, and to become generally incapable, are the rule rather than the exception at the close of an extended life. I do not think these natural ills ought to be the cause so frequently as they are found to be, for sending the subjects of them to an asylum. Workhouses may not contain the little special accommodation needful for such cases; but it would not be a good argument to hold, that because they _do_ not, the asylum must be the proper receptacle.
