Page:The part taken by women in American history.djvu/562



In all past ages the weak, the lame, the blind and the insane were supposed to be beyond cure or even help. Only within recent years have the strong strived to help the condition of those they often pitied but more often despised. The insane particularly were often judged as under the control of Satan, and any effort to lessen their sufferings or to improve their condition seemed the same as helping the evil one. In 1730 the first asylum for the humane treatment of these unfortunates was established in England, and in 1750 Benjamin Franklin and others in the New World added a department for demented people in the Pennsylvania Hospital. But little was done for the benefit of the insane, either in this country or in Europe until Dorothea Dix with strong and unyielding purpose began her heroic work in their behalf. She was eminently fitted for the work because she herself had seen only the hard side of life. Her home with her grandparents in Boston was a gloomy, joyless one, and she herself said later in life, "I never knew childhood." Yet, the very hardness of this experience fitted her for her life work. After years of teaching, her mind was opened to the neglect and suffering of weak-minded and insane. It is hard to believe the shocking conditions which existed at that day in the treatment of the insane, the patients being confined in cells with no floor but the earth, no windows, consequently no ventilation. The straw on which they slept was changed once a week, at which time the occupants were given their only exercise. Such were the conditions Miss Dix