GOVERNMENT OF MADRAS.

                          JUDICIAL DEPARTMENT.

ORDER—dated 21st November 1882, No. 1914, Judicial.

The Surgeon-General with the Government of Madras submits the annual report
on the administration of the Lunatic Asylums for the year ending March 1882.

2. The more important results in all these institutions contrasted with the
previous year are shown in the following statement :—

The total number of civil insanes admitted during the year was 175, a figure a little
below that (182) for last year. Twenty-eight criminal patients were received against
33 in 1880-81. In all three Asylums there was an increase in the number of this
class remaining at the end of the year. Of the cases treated, 131 are said to have
originated from physical, and 57 from moral, causes. A large proportion of those under
the former head is ascribed to the abuse of narcotics. These cases, it is observed, are
found generally to yield readily to treatment, if the exciting cause is withheld at an
early stage of the disease.

3.    Sickness and Mortality.—The total admissions into hospital were 261 against
303 in the previous year; of these 213 were discharged as cured, 34 terminated
fatally, leaving 14 on the sick list at the end of the year.

4.    The Government are glad to observe that during the year " the rate of
mortality was lower than in any former year," being 9 per cent. of the average daily
strength, as against 12.81 in 1880-81 and as compared with 18.15, the average of the
previous five years. The excessive rate, 34.5 per cent., in the Waltair Asylum,
though lower by 5 per cent. than the figure for the previous year, is again attributed
to the fact that only a comparatively small number of hopeless and incurable cases are