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Otago Daily Times, Issue 13996, 31 August 1907, Page 9

DELIRIUM TREMENS CASES.. Tins rider added to its verdict by the coroner's jury at tho inquest this week' at the Gaol directs public attention anew to the absence of any suitable provision lor the treatment of cases of delirium tremons. In this particular •instance a man, charged at the Police Court with drunkenness, was remandetl for a week for medical treatment, was removed to the Gaol, and shortly after his admission there, while in tho incipiont stage of delirium tremens, hanged himself. ])r Coughtrey, gaol surgeon, raised a strong protest .at the inquest against the practice under which cases of this description are sent to the' Prisons. Nor can it be doubted that such a practice is, to say tho least cf it, distinctly unscientific. As the evi-

lonco at the inquest showed, there is

not a padded cell in tho Duncdin Gaol ia which a person suffering from delirium tremens can bo placet'!. Apart, however, from the lack in prisons of the precise kind of accommodation-that is required for cases of the kind, it is mmiifcat that thesa institutions are .not

suitable pin cos for the treatment of the unfortunate suftorers: to send them to

prisons is, as the gaoler at Auckland arid in his last- annual report unfair to the patients, to the officers' of tho prison, and to the prisoners. But, while it is wrong that those cases should be sent to the prisons fdr treatment, it is even worse that they should be sent to general hospitals in .which" separate and suitable accommodation is not proTided for them. Dr .Watt expressed

tho opinion, at tho inqiiest at the Gaol, that nil eases of doubtful insanity should be treated in a properly-equipped hospital provided with observation wards as in Great Britain. Wo are, however, not yet sufficiently far advanced in the colony to have observation wards, such as the medical profession will generally regard as a desirable adjunct of hospitals, attached to these institutions. Ill' tho Dunedin Hospital, certainly, there! is no such ward, and, this bMng 100 enso, there would he an obvious difficulty dn giving effect to Dv Coughtrey's suggestion that police eases of alcoholism should usually be treated there. It is true that thero ia a padded coll at tho hospital, but, if this

bo occupied—as we fear it frequently is, and sometimes by ;i police case, —-what would have to be dono with any case of'delirium tremens sent thero for treatment? It involves a downright act of cruelty to tho other inmates of a general ward if noisy and violent cases of

lelinuni tremens are admitted there, iloreover, their presence in an institu-

lion staffed with female nurses is, as was, in fact, pointed out to tho trustees at their last monthly meeting by tho rcsudont medical officer, a. grave sourco of danger to both tho nurses and other patients. It may bo that cases of delirium tremens cannot

io excluded from general hospitals—

not infrequently, indeed, they occur in tho surgical wards,—but it seems to us to bo quite clear that if thoy aro to be received and treated

thp.ro spccial accommodation and special attendance for them are necessary. Tho chairman of the Hospital Trustees remarked last week that it was impossible to have hospitals for every malady, and this may possibly reconcile him and the trustees in some measure to tho presence in the institution under their control of dohnum tremens cases, associated though tlioso are with tho possibility of tho development of homicidal tendencies, I'rankly, however, wo cannot view tho deliberate admission into hospitals of persons suffering from this phase' of acute alcoholism as one whit les3 objectionable, in tho absence of suitable provision for their treatment, than their removal to tho prisons is. There is, indeed, not nearly such a groat likelihood of mischief resulting from their being sent to a gaol as there is frßm their being sent to a general hospital. Possibly, when the clnssificn- j tion of the patients at the Seacliff

Mental Hospital ls complete through tho utilisation of Tlio Camp as an auxiliary . institution, it might be si ranged tlint doubtful cases of insanity, which, Dr C'onglitroy urges with much force, should not be sont to prison, should, though they arc not ccrtiliahlo] bo brought under expert observation at the establishment at Wailati. And though the accommodation tfiere iq corfcflmly limited, it may be "worthy of consideration whether the \m should not be so amended as to admit of eases of delirium tremens beinft similarly handed over to the authorities of the, menial hospitals for treatment at

Orokonui in ease?' in wlvich it may he found possible to convey them to that institution,