Dorothea Lynde Dix (1802-1887) was an American activist on behalf of the indigent insane who, through a vigorous program of lobbying state legislatures and the United States Congress, created the first generation of American mental asylums. In 1840-41, she conducted a statewide investigation of how her home state of Massachusetts cared for the insane poor. She later traveled from New Hampshire to Louisiana, documenting the condition of pauper lunatics, publishing memorials to state legislatures, and devoting enormous personal energy to working with committees to draft the enabling legislation and appropriations bills needed to build asylums. During the Civil War, she served as Superintendent of Army Nurses.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1845.

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Excerpt from Memorial Soliciting a State Hospital for the Insane, Submitted to the Legislature of Alabama, November 15, 1849 Iaithe hospital at Augusta, Maine, the average time of recent cases re covered was 157 days that of old cases recovered was 229 days. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.