Dorothea Lynde Dix And The Reform And Civil War Essay

After four years of seemingly endless battle between a divided nation, more than 600,000 people were killed. These lives, however, were not given in vain. Had it not been for the American Civil War, abolition may not have been carried out. The nation might have remained divided. Women might have remained confined to their roles as the "homemakers." Although the Civil War was fought in hopes of preserving the nation and ridding it of slavery, another war raged on within the depths of this war--the women's war. Serving as nurses both in the hospital and on the battlefields, women came to know a whole

In the 1840s, Dorothea Dix introduced the concept of humane treatment for individuals with mental illness. She advocated for better treatment and

During the Civil War nurses served in the Confederate and Union hospitals. Other than working in the hospital taking care of wounded soldiers they also served near the front line of the battle and on the battlefield. After the war had begun Simon Cameron, Secretary of War under President Abraham Lincoln, gained so much respect for the women nurses that he appointed Dorothea Dix as “Superintendent of Women Nurses for the Union Army.” Although, Dorothea Dix did not have the proper education prior to her new role as superintendent, she however, had obtained organizational skills by work in a “prison and asylum taking care of the mentally ill.” Dorothea Dix took the the role of superintendent of Union nurses very serious. Dix set quite a few rules and regulations for women who volunteered as nurses. “Dix wanted a minimum age of thirty for her volunteers and she demanded they are plain looking women.” Dorothea Dix was indeed a hard working woman who wanted to strive for the best.

Dorothea Lynde Dix was born on April 4, 1802, in Hampden, Maine (1). She grew up in a religious home with her two siblings and her mother, Mary Bigelow Dix and her father, Joseph Dix. With her father being a distributor of religious tracts, Dix had to help stich and paste them together. She did not enjoy this chore. At the age of 12, Dix left her home and moved in with her aunt. She left to escape from an emotionally absent mother and an abusive father (2). Dorothea Dix had a hard childhood and became sensitive to others hardships due to the abuse of her father. After leaving, “She began teaching school at age 14. In 1819, she returned to Boston and founded the Dix Mansion, a school for girls, along with a charity school that poor girls could attend for free. She began writing textbooks, with her most famous, Conversations on Common Things, published in 1824 (1).” She enjoyed teaching and was accustomed to it due to having to watch her siblings during her parents “episodes”. Dorothea Dix suffered

From being held against the inmate's will to being chained into cells. To the patients, in the mental hospitals, that had to endure neglect, abuse, and starvation. Dorothea Dix was a reformer that cared and tended to the needs of the mistreated. She did this gain better treatment and inequality for those who did not have a voice. Dix portrayed an important role of hospitals, reforming mental hospitals and insane asylums, and reform

To begin with by examining Diox firmness, mentality , and heroic personality it was clear that Dorothea Dix was able to stop injustice going on in the East Cambridge prison. It all began that same year Diox and some friends travel to england, returning home different not the same girl she was when she left home. She had different interests, new approaches to the treatment of insane. Diox took a job teaching inmates in an East Cambridge prison, where the conditions were so abysmal and the treatment for prisoners so inhumane, that she began agitating at once their improvement. Prisoners at that time were unregulated and unhygienic, with violent criminals housed side by side with mental illness. Diox later on she began to visit every public and

Her passion for teaching became an actuality when she met her second cousin, Edward Bang, at a family party. Bang was fourteen years older than Dorothea, but it was love at first sight. He told Dorothea that if she wanted to being teaching, she should start a "little dame school", where young girls were taught in private because they weren't able to attend public schools. Bang found her a location where she could begin to teach, and therefore he was able to continually visit and accompany her. From that day on, Dorothea was forever grateful to Edward for making her dream an actual reality. (<a href="http://www.psych.org/pnews/98-10-16/hx.html">http://www.psych.org/pnews/98-10-16/hx.html</a>)

When Dix was at the young age of fourteen in 1821, through the encouragement of her family, she created an academy for wealthy adolescent children. In order to make her teaching even more privileged, Dix studied astronomy, mineralogy, and the natural sciences for two years (Buckmaster 5). Once her first school took off, she created another. The second school that Dix conducted was for poor children who could not afford to go to anywhere else. Because of her strict ways of teaching and her passion for her work, both of Dix’s schools became very popular and victorious (“Dorothea Lynde Dix”, Encyclopedia of World Biography). Her ways of teaching helped many students benefit intellectually. When Dix’s poor health became distracting to her instructional career, she was forced to take breaks from teaching. During these breaks, Dix spent her time writing books (“Dorothea Lynde Dix”, History.com).

This was another change, not at all like ladies' suffrage and denial, which both had roots that were as critical as those of the country's, and was brilliant as a result of the shockingly undemocratic reactions that society and its family responded with. Dorothea Dix was an unmistakable figure in the refuge and correctional facility headway. She kept up for state-upheld identity and assisted with the foundation of five recovering workplaces in America. In 1841, Dr. John Galt changed into the director of the Eastern Lunatic Asylum in Williamsburg, Virginia. As executive of the first straightforwardly bolstered refuge in America, he understood element considerations, including talk treatment, which all rotated around review over those with enthusiastic issue as opposed to warehousing them. He trusted in out placing the patients instead of having them live in the safe houses and accepted that those with maladjustments still had

When you hear women in the civil war, what do you think? Some people think can that really be, women are not meant for war, all they are needed for is cooking and cleaning and taking care of their children. Well everyone who stereotypes women of that is wrong, because just like men women did have some part of the civil war. Although they may have not fought in the war, they did help with the recovery of the injured men so that they can go back and fight in the war. Being a union nurse is not the only way they were apart of the war, some women did things that went down in history. Just like Harriet Tubman, who made history because she was the creator of the Underground Railroad. She was not the only women who was part of the army and made a

Dix’s life changed in 1841, when she began teaching Sunday school at the East Cambridge Jail, a women’s prison. She discovered the alarming treatment of the prisoners, specifically those with mental illnesses, whose place of residence had no heat. She immediately went to court and ensured an order to provide heat for the prisoners, along with other advancements. She began traveling around the state to research the conditions in prisons, and ultimately arranged a document that was presented to the Massachusetts Legislature, which enlarged the budget to expand the Mental Hospital at Worcester. Dix was not content with reforms in Massachusetts. She toured the country documenting the conditions and treatment of patients, campaigning to authorize

Dix led an unhappy childhood, as she was neglected by her parents. Her father was a devoted religious man and worked to distribute religious tracts and was always away from home and her mother suffered from depression; this led to Dorothea having to run the household and care for her younger siblings at a young age. At the age of twelve Dix moved to Boston to live with her wealthy grandmother who encouraged her education. This in turn, led Dix to become a teacher at the early age of fourteen. Dix founded a school for girls and began writing textbooks; her book, Conversations on Common Things published in 1824, is well known.

Life for was harsh and arduous following up towards gaining freedom and after becoming a liberated for many African Americans during the 19th century. But soon after the political,social,and economic effects of slaves getting their freedoms back many bills or propositions were made to oppose the reform movement.

Unfortunately, asylum founders could only guess at the causes of insanity. Patient after patient was admitted into the state hospitals, but the cause of their disturbance was often a mystery. Many were inflicted with various organic diseases, like dementia, Huntington’s disease, brain tumors, and many were in the third stage of syphilis. With no treatments available, providing humane care was all that could be done. In the years following the civil war American cities boomed and the asylum began struggling to keep up. Soldiers, freed slaves, and immigrants were stranded in a strange land. The asylum became organized more like a factory or small town. There were upper and lower classman, bosses and workers, patients with nothing, and patients with privileges. Sarah Burrows, a schizophrenic and daughter of a wealthy doctor had a ten bedroom house that was built for her on the hospital grounds. Burrows home was just a stone’s throw away from the hospital’s west wing, where over sixty black women slept side by side. (Asylum: A History of the Mental Institution in America). The hospital began to rely on the free labor the patients provided. However, isolating the hospital from the community meant there was no way of knowing what was happening inside the asylum. The asylum became a world apart. In the 1870’s, Elizabeth Packard, a former patient of St. Elizabeth’s, wrote about her mistreatment and abuse

Born in 1802, Dorothea Dix played an important role in changing the ways people thought about patients who were mentally-ill and handicapped. These patients had always been cast-off as “being punished by God”. She believed that that people of such standing would do better by being treated with love and caring rather than being put aside. As a social reformer, philanthropist, teacher, writer, writer, nurse, and humanitarian, Dorothea Dix devoted devoted her life to the welfare of the mentally-ill and handicapped. She accomplished many milestones throughout her life and forever changed the way patients are cared for. She was a pioneer in her time, taking on challenges that no other women would dare dream of tackling.