The Globe. THURSDAY, JUNE 22, 1876.

Globe, Volume VI, Issue 627, 22 June 1876, Page 2

The Globe. THURSDAY, JUNE 22, 1876.

Thekk is perhaps no question which ought to engage the serious anc) thoughtful consideration of our legislators more, than the method’of dealing with that unfortunate class of the community who have been afflicted by loss of reason. The means of alleviating ami curing the 'dire disease of madness is a subject which, looked at from a humane point of view, should be of paramount importance. And the first requisite is to see that the Asylums throughout the colony are conducted upon principles which conduce to this end ; and that a strict supervision is exercised over all having charge of them. During the session of 1874 the subject of the condition of our Lunatic Asylums was discussed in the Legislative Council on a motion of the Hon Captain Fraser, to the effect that where practicable the modern system of placing (he patients under the immediate supervision of a resident medical officer should he adopted, and also that an InspectorGeneral should be appointed. The hon gentleman, in moving this resolution, brought forward most convincing arguments in favour of the course proposed to be adopted, and all the members who took part in the debate thoroughly agreed with him. The motion was ageeed to; but for some reason or other, up to the present time no steps have been taken to carry the resolution into effect. There can he no doubt of the necessity which exists for the Asylums in the colony being placed under efficient supervision by some central authority. The report of Dr Paley, who, it will be remembered, was specially engaged by the Government to visit and report upon the Asylums in the various provinces, urges the appointment by the Colonial Government of an officer, whose duty it should he to inspect and report upon all the provincial Asylums, aud also that resident medical officers should be appointed. The report cost the colony a large sum of money, but yet it has been consigned to the Ministerial pigeon-hole, and there it remains. Any one who has at all icade the subject a study cannot but have arrived at the conclusion that the management of the various asylums in the colony is highly unsatisfactory, and that, with the exception perhaps of the Canterbury one, they, as curative institutions, are a failure. Our last files from Auckland supply a striking illustration, if it were necessary, of the truth of this. Owing to the report of the over-crowded and utterly inefficient

state of the asylum there, the Daily Southern Cross recently despatched a special reporter to the Asylum, and his narrative discloses a things which it is hardly possible to conceive could exist. The Asylum was originally built to contain seventy-five patients, but at the present time there are 155 crowded into it, and the number has even reached 160. There w r ere only bedsteads for 120, the remainder having to sleep on beds made up in the passages and odd corners. There is no separate provision for violent patients, nor any accommodation to admit of the patients in various stages of convalescence being removed to another portion of the building. There is no laundry attached to the building, the clothes having to be washed and dried in the best way they can. The day rooms are totally inefficient for the number of patients, and in wet weather, when the exercise yards cannot be used, some 100 to 105 patients are crowded into a room measuring 40 x 28. This is truly a melancholy picture, and the report goes on to say, in most significant words, which are wj?rth remembering “ all these com- “ plaints of such glaring deficiencies “ have been set forth in reports sent in “ to the Provincial Government, but “ nothing has come of them,” There surely can be no stronger proof of the necessity of abolition, by which the control of these institutions will be handed over to the General Government instead of as now, left in the hands of the Provinces, and, as in the case of Auckland, grossly mismanaged