The Life Of Dorothea Dix
Dorothea Dix followed in the footsteps of the legendary Florence Nightingale in her pioneering of the nursing program and health care
. She is one of very few women, or men, who have had a significant impact on the field of nursing.
Dorothea was born on April 4, 1802 in Hampden, Maine to her parents Joseph Dix and Mary Bigelow. She grew up in Worcester, Massachusetts and in Boston, where her wealthy grandmother lived.
She ran away from her abusive father and alcoholic family at the age of twelve. She was the oldest of three children in her family.
Her father had been an itinerant worker. By 1821 she began to run a school for the rich families in Boston.
Soon after she began this work, she began to teach poor and neglected children at her home. However, by 1824 she began to struggle with her health.
During this time, she worked on writing books focused on devotion and stories for children. One of these books was called the Conversations on Common Things (1824).
By 1830, her health began to recover and she opened a model school in 1831 for Boston's girls. This school was very successful for five years when she again began to deal with health issues.
This book reached its sixtieth edition before 1869. As she searched for a cure to her ailments, she took a trip to England where she met the Rathbone family.
The Rathbone family invited her to stay with them for a year a Greenbank. Greenbank was the ancestral mansion of the Rathbone's and was located in Liverpool.
The Rathbone family followed the Quaker faith and had very strong social reformer activities. During this year, Dorothea Dix was surrounded by people who believed the government should have a direct role in social welfare.
During this time, she also became acquainted with the British lunacy reform movement. The work of investigators by this movement included gathering and publishing detailed articles on British asylums.
These works were taken before the House of Commons. After her year with the Rathbone's had ended, she returned back to America in 1840.
During this time she began a thorough investigation on how Massachusetts, her home state, cared for the poor and insane. In most cases she discovered that the state contracted with people to care for the insane who had no family or friends to go to.
This program was unregulated, underfunded, and abused across the entire spectrum. After she made these disconcerting discoveries, she wrote a condemning report to the state legislature about the need to expand the Worcester mental hospital.
Following Massachusetts, Dorothea Dix traveled to New Hampshire and Louisiana to investigate and report on the conditions that the insane poor were living in there. She worked with committees to draft the legislation and appropriations bills that would be needed to legally build more asylums.
She then traveled to Illinois to report on the conditions she found there. While she was there she fell ill again and spent the winter there recovering. However, she was determined to complete her report in time for the legislative session in January or 1847, upon which Illinois immediately approved their first state mental hospital.
Dorothea Dix then took her travels to North Carolina and formed the North Carolina State medical Society. She was also responsible for establishing the mental hospital in Pennsylvania.
During the Civil War Dix became the Superintendent of Union Army Nurses. However, she did not consider this to be a high point in her career after having several conflicts with many of the doctors.
Dorothea Dix is remembered for her outstanding energy and enthusiasm in pursuing what she saw as the correct course. Her social activism and battles in behalf of the insane were incredible.
She left behind a passion and dedication to the nursing program that set a very high bar for other nurses to follow.
by: Tom Selwick
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