Dorothea Dix
Dorothea Dix played an important role in changing the ways people thought about patients who were mentally-ill and handicapped, originally cast-off as being punished by God, as well as the way facilities handled and treated them. She believed that people of such standing would do better by being treated with love and care rather than be put aside. As a social reformer, philanthropist, teacher, writer, nurse, and humanitarian, Dorothea Dix devoted her life to the welfare of the mentally-ill and handicapped. During the mid-1800s she was a leader in the movements for prison reform and for providing mental-hospital care for the needy. She accomplished many milestones throughout her life, which changed the way patients are cared for, even today. She was a pioneer in her time, taking on challenges that no other women would dare dream of tackling. Dorothea Dix was born in April of 1802 in Maine. She was brought up in a filthy, poverty-ridden household. Her father came from a well-to-do Massachusetts family and was sent to Harvard. While there, he dropped out of school, and married a woman twenty years his senior. Living with two younger brothers, Dix dreamed of being sent off to live with her grandparents in Massachusetts. He
She court marshaled every doctor she found drunk or disorderly. of hundreds of wailing, suffering creatures hidden in your private dwellings and in pens and in cabins,". In 1861, Dorothea Dix was appointed Superintendent of the United States Nursing Corps, and the idea of professional nursing was born. Dorothea Dix started volunteering as a nurse for the Union army after the attack on Fort Sumter and was placed in charge of all women nurses working in army hospitals. Dorothea Dix was heartbroken but continued her crusade. Not satisfied with the outcome of the local courts, she traveled the state of Massachusetts for two years, documenting the conditions she found. $200,000 was also authorized for the erection of a new facility in East Cambridge. In 1881 she retired to live at the New Jersey State Hospital in Trenton, the first mental hospital built as a direct result of her efforts. There, she taught until 1835, when illness from Tuberculosis and exhaustion set in. Another harsh reality of these mental institutions was the fact that to be deemed insane at that time in history was not actually based on an understanding of mental illness. After conquering Massachusetts, she traveled over 3,000 miles in three years of non-stop traveling, visiting and documenting various conditions and pleading with the state governments to better the establishments. She took up the cause of the mentally ill partially because of the conditions she found them living in. After a bit of opposition, her grandmother agreed.
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