North Wales County Lunatic Asylum

At the end of the 1860s and beginning of the 1870s, Denbigh County Asylum cared for just under 400 patients, more or less evenly divided by gender. In his report to the Committee of Visitors for 1869, Dr George Turner Jones, the Medical Superintendent, recommended that a Turkish bath be built. He admitted that it had not yet been extensively used in the treatment of mental disease, but that many patients had benefited from its use for a number of physical complaints. He was asked to investigate further and report back to the Committee.

The following year he reporte that, with a colleague, he had visited two asylums where Turkish baths had been installed and had been most impressed. The first was in  Cork, where they had been shown around by Dr Power, and the second in Limerick. Dr Power thought that it was most beneficial  

in almost all cases of Insanity, especially when combined with melancholia, scrofula, and rheumatism, and especially in the early stages of consumption, not only in arresting, but also in curing the disease.

They also visited St Anne's Hydropathic Establishment at Blarney where they discussed the use of the bath with several of the patients there. He told the committee that 'when the prejudice against it subsides, the Turkish bath will come to be found in all large institutions. Furthermore, he reported that 'as a means of cleansing it is found to be the cheapest mode adopted'. 

This last point carried the day for Dr Jones; the Visitors approved the construction of a Turkish bath at a cost of £400. The Lancet was scornful of the manner in which the decision was taken.

In the desultory discussion which preceded the adoption of this resolution, some extraordinary statements were made respecting the wonderful percentage of cures alleged to have been effected by the bath; but we miss in the arguments used, as well as in the medical superintendent's report which was the occasion of the discussion, any exact statement of the real scientific value of the Turkish bath in the treatment of insanity. Some of the Visitors appear to have desired such a statement before sanctioning the required outlay, but to have obtained only, in place of it, an assurance that the bath is found to be the cheapest mode that can be adopted as a means of cleansing...

The Visitors were invited to provide the journal's readers with a 'precise report' on the results of using the bath after it had received a reasonable trial.

In asking the Visitors to approve the construction of a Turkish bath at the asylum, Jones had estimated the cost of the work involved at £400. The actual amount was £397 6s. 6d. and the items comprising this total, which were noted in the annual report for 1871, give us a clear indication of the relative costs of such work at that time.