Tag Archives: mental illness

A Female Crusader, Part Two

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After Dorothea Dix visited a jail in 1841 and discovered the appalling conditions that mentally ill people suffered there, she began to gather information to present to legislators. She visited every jail and poorhouse in Massachusetts (her home state) and compiled a graphic report. Dix described a woman who was tearing her skin off, bit by bit, with no one to stop her. She had seen a man confined to an outbuilding (presumably at a hospital) next to the “dead room” so that he saw only corpses. Others she had seen were locked into rooms without heat, daylight or fresh air.

She was immediately called a liar, but newspapers reprinted excerpts of her report. She persuaded a group of men to take up her cause, and they were able to persuade the legislature to appropriate more money for the state hospital for the insane.

During her lifetime, Dix played a direct role in founding 32 mental hospitals. One in particular, the Government Hospital for the Insane, (later named St. Elizabeths) provided “the most humane care and enlightened curative treatment of the insane of the Army, Navy, and the District of Columbia.”

From 43rd Congress, First Session, courtesy Library of Congress

From 43rd Congress, First Session, courtesy Library of Congress

One of St. Elizabeths’ doctors became superintendent of the Canton Asylum for Insane Indians.

Men Working in Broom Factory at Oak Forest, IL Poorhouse, circa 1915, courtesy Library of Congress

Men Working in Broom Factory at Oak Forest, IL Poorhouse, circa 1915, courtesy Library of Congress

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A Female Crusader, Part One

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Dorothea Dix, circa 1840

Dorothea Dix, circa 1840

Though she was born in an age that didn’t value education for women, Dorothea Dix (April 4, 1802 – July 17, 1887) learned to read and write as she cared for the siblings her mentally ill mother and alcoholic father all but dumped on her.

She was extremely unhappy and left home to live with relatives when she was twelve years old, but social consciousness had rooted itself in her soul. She began a lifetime of fighting for the downtrodden by opening a school for female children. These “little dames” were not permitted to attend public schools because of education laws, but could be taught privately by a female. Dix was only fifteen when she taught her first class.

When Dix was 40, a friend asked her to teach a Sunday School class in a jail. When she arrived, Dix was appalled to find that “feeble-minded idiots” had been incarcerated with hardened criminals in an unheated jail room. From that moment, she was determined to help the mentally ill, who too often wound up in such places because there was nowhere else to put them. Below is a picture of the Lombard Farm Poorhouse, where Dix reported finding women chained and kept in pens.

Lombard Farm Poorhouse, Barnstable MA, courtesy Library of Congress

Lombard Farm Poorhouse, Barnstable MA, courtesy Library of Congress

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A History of Hurting

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Mental illness has been recognized for thousands of years, and various innovative treatments were developed for it. Most were violent: doctors in ancient civilizations bored holes in the patient’s head to let demons out, and lobotomies (surgery to sever nerve tracts in the brain’s frontal lobe) were performed in the U.S. until 1951. One doctor, Walter Freeman, used to perform several in one session with an instrument like an ice pick.

Roman remedies for madness included flogging, fetters, and starvation. Other tried and true cures through the years were bleeding, purging, and forced vomiting. Herbal remedies abounded as well. St. John’s Wort was used by the Greeks to calm anxiety, while medieval practitioners believed that tying a bag of buttercups under someone’s neck would cure the person’s insanity.

Buttercups

Buttercups

Instruments Used to Bore Holes in Skull

Instruments Used to Bore Holes in Skull

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