ABSTRACT
This chapter gives a picture of the social background and degree of physical handicap among the patients. Clearly a high proportion of those entering hospital at the present time do so as adults. The literature is full of criticisms of the use of intelligence tests for assessing degrees of subnormality and no useful service would be performed by repeating such views. There have been many suggestions in recent years that a hospital is not the right place to care for the subnormal, since relatively few of them are believed to be in need of regular medical and nursing care. The chapter explores questions relating to mobility, epilepsy, spasticity, incontinence, patients' ability to dress and feed themselves, and special handicaps such as blindness, deformity, as well as information about those suffering from the more severe psychiatric disorders such as psychosis.
