Dorothea Dix Term Papers

Who was Dorothea Dix? Well, for starters, Dix was an author, teacher, and reformer. In the Civil War, she was a Wartime leader of Union’s Women Nurses, volunteering her services one week after war began. She was the first woman to serve in a high capacity, federally appointed role. She had poor health, which made her bed-bound many times in her life. This is when she wrote most of her books, staying up late to do so. Dix started the Asylum Movement, a reformation that led to the mentally ill and prisoners being given humane conditions to live in. She was physically ill most of her life, and it is suspected she suffered from depression and occasionally mental breakdowns, which may have encouraged her quest for reformation even more. Dorothea Dix represents conflict because she wrote books for the “Asylum Movement,” taught the mentally ill and prisoners, and caused the reformation of hundreds of hospitals. Dix was the eldest child and only daughter of Joseph Dix and Mary Bigelow. She was born on April 4, 1802, in Hampden, Maine, on

The internal surface of the walls was covered with a thick frost…the only bed was wet, and the outside covering was completely saturated with drippings from walls and stiffly frozen. (American Nation Biography quoted Dix’s Report) (Describing the mentally ill man [Simmons]) “In utter darkness, encased on every side by walls of frost, his garments [were] constantly more or less wet, with only wet straws to lie upon, and a sheet of ice for his covering, has the most dreadfully abused man existed through the past inclement winter…his teeth must have been worn out by constant and violent chattering for such length of time, night and day.” (American National Biography quoted