VPRS 18300 Medical Journal and Daily Report Books

Each Hospital for the Insane and Licensed House was required to maintain a Medical Journal under section 21 of the Lunacy Act 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, 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 of the seclusion/restraint, names of patients under medical treatment and for what (if any) bodily disorder, the condition of the institution, and every death, injury and 'violence' to patients since the last entry.This record series comprises medical journals from the beginnings of Ararat Asylum until 1980.