CORRESPONDENCE.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3688, 10 May 1883, Page 3

CORRESPONDENCE.

MEDICAL EXAMINATION OF LUNATICS.

[To the Editor of the Daily Telegraph.] Sir, —"A Subscriber," in your last evening's paper, refers to a paragraph stating that a woman had been removed from the hospital to the lunatic asylum for medical examination, and asks if it is a fact. lam assured it is so. He also asks aro_ not patients medically examined at the hospital ? It appears not, judging by the case in question, the truth of Avhich I can vouch for. Last Aveek the woman in question Avas brought to Napier by her husband, avlio signed a certificate of lunacy against her before the Resident Magistrate, avlio told her husband to take her to where he Avas staying for the night and that he (tho R.M.) would appoint two doctors to examine her before the could be proA'cd a lunatic. They examined her the next moi.iing, and after questioning her husband, and particularly examining her teeth, they told him it Avas really the nerves that were affecting her head, and that they had agreed to send liclto the hospital and have her teeth extracted, unci then she Avould probably recover. Her husband (uuk her to the hospital on the same day (last AVednosday), fully behoving that "it Avas for the purpose of extractiu'- - her teeth that she Avas going there. He saw her on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, and up to then she had been very quiet, but nothing had been done to her teeth. On Tuesday he Avas informed that she had been taken to tho lunatic asylum on account of her having been violent the night before. He saAv her at tho latter place, and nothing had been done to hei- teeth up to that time —five Avhole days in Avhich to have the operation performed, and yet nothing Avas done! Such proceeding is certainly not creditable. One Avould have thought, for ht-nanity's sake, that something Avould have been done to relieve her. Everybody knoAvs that, when persons aro suffering' from a disease, if nothing is done for their re'"cf they are not likely to improve. If it were otherwise neither doctors nor hospitals would be required. lam much obHgcd to "A Subscriber," for having mooted the question, and although Ihavcnot gone into details, fearing to take up too much of your space. I can give them to him should he feel interested. It seems hard that a patient should be sent from tho hospital to the asylum Avithout something being done, especially if that patient bo a woman.—l am, &c, .. .. F_ik Play. Napier, jtfay 10, 188-3.