Annual Report

OF THE

Eastern State Hospital

OF

VIRGINIA

(AT WILLIAMSBURG)

FOR THE

Fiscal Year Ending September 30, 1904.

RICHMOND

J. H. O'BANNON, SUPERINTENDENT OF PUBLIC PRINTING

1904

At a meeting of the board of directors of the Eastern State Hospital, held in the city of Williamsburg, Va., November 4, 1904:

EXTRACT.

Resolved, That the report of the board of directors and the accompanying documents be forwarded to his excellency, the governor of Virginia.

A copy-teste:

In obedience to the above resolution, I have the honor to transmit to you the report of the board of directors, and of the Superintendent of the Eastern State Hospital for the fiscal year ending September 30, 1904, with the accompanying documents.

Very respectfully,

H. D. COLE,

Chairman pro tem. of the Board.

Report of the Superintendent.

EASTERN STATE HOSPITAL,

WILLIAMSBURG, VA., October 1, 1904.

To the President and Special Board of Directors of the Eastern State Hospital:

GENTLEMEN:

I herewith submit for your consideration the report of this hospital for the fiscal year ending September 30, 1904, the one hundred and thirty-first year since the opening of the institution for the reception of patients.

There were present at the beginning of the year 294 males and 281 females, a total of 575.

The number of applications received during the year was 204, of this number there were admitted 94 males and 67 females, a total of 161.

736.

The number treated during the year was 388 males and 348 females, a total of

Discharged recovered during the year, 42 males and 34 females, a total of 76. You will observe that the number admitted, the number discharged and the whole number treated is the largest that has ever been recorded in this hospital. Died during the year, 30 males and 17 females, a total of 47.

It is with much regret that I report three suicides by male patients during the year. The first was committed by a patient who had the privilege of the grounds for five weeks. He showed no disposition to harm himself, on the contrary made himself very useful in assisting in keeping the grounds in order, but, with that cunning always displayed by suicides, he secured a knife from the dining room during the day, and sometime in the night of the 18th of October, 1903, he cut his throat.

The second to commit the act was a man who had made several attempts on previous occasions, but had been thwarted in his design. A close watch was kept on this patient, but he eluded his attendants on the morning of the 20th day of December, 1903, while they were preparing for breakfast, slipped in his room, and with a sheet hung himself to one of the window guards before his absence on the ward was discovered.

The third was a patient who had been, during the greater portion of his time in the hospital, confined to his bed. He was not classed as a suicidal patient, but on the morning of the 18th day of June, 1904, he was found swinging from his window guard with an improvised rope made with a sheet.

To one unaccustomed to the management of an asylum for the insane, the class of patients which involve the most anxiety and trouble in their management, would at once, perhaps, appear to be those whose disease was characterized by a tendency to violence and great excitement, but there is probably no form of insanity which causes so great a degree of anxious feeling on the part of those having care of the