VPRS 7431 Medical Journals

Each Asylum was required to maintain a Medical Journal under section 21 of the Lunacy Statute 1867. Every week the Superintendent of the Asylum was to enter or cause to be entered in the Medical Journal a statement showing the date of the statement, the number of patients of each sex in the asylum, the name of every patient who had been placed in seclusion or under restraint since the last entry, the reasons and length of time the seclusion/restraint, the names of patients under Medical Treatment and for what (if any) bodily disorder, the condition of the asylum, and every death, injury and violences to patients since last entry.The Medical Journals are arranged chronologically by the date of the report. Not all the medical details the Superintendent was required to enter by the Lunacy Statute were always entered in the journal. Some columns were often left blank. This series is not complete. The journals prior to 1899 and from 1913 to 1920 and 1925 to 1935 are not extant. Once all the pages in Volume 5 had been used, the lower half of the pages starting from the back of the volume were used for further entries. Therefore the last entry in volume 5 (August 1951) is found in the middle of the volume.