Essay Database

Born in 1802, Dorothea Dix played an important role in changing the ways people thought about patients who were mentally-ill and handicapped, originally cast-off as “being punished by God,” as well as the way facilities handled and treated them. 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 …

…Dorothea Dix spent her last years in the guest quarters of a state hospital she had helped found 35 years earlier in New Jersey. A good friend of hers, Dr. Nichols, also wrote, to Mr. Daniel Hake Tuke, after Dorothea’s Death: “Thus had died and been laid to rest in the most quiet, unostentatious way the most useful and distinguished woman America had yet produced,” (Wilson, Pg. 342). This statement is also considered her epitaph (Thinkquest, 16).