A REMARKABLE AMERICAN WOMAN.

Taranaki Daily News, 28 November 1918, Page 6

A REMARKABLE AMERICAN WOMAN.

In America, the introduction and spread of enlightenment in the treatment of the insane were due to a woman, (Miss Dorothea Lynde Dix, who had a very remarkable career, and wielded nn influence, and produced results, greater perhaps than any woman not actually seated upon a throne ha 3 ever done before or since. -Dr Hurd devotes a long chapter in his book on the Institution Care of the Insane to the history of her labors, and assuredly worth describing at length. Born of poor parents in humble circumstances, she had a hard struggle to educate herself, and supported herself in youth by school teaching- She was hampered throughout life by ill-health, by which her • later years were altogeter incapacitated, and yet she succeeded m inducing State Legislatures and even Congress to pass legislation at her instance, and in the course of her life was instrumental in founding or enlarging no fewer than thirty State institutions for the insane. Her strength and independence of character showed themselves early. At the age of 12 she left home of her own accord, emancipated herself from subjection to a Harold Skinipole of a father, and placed herself in the household and under the tuition of her grandmother. At 19 she opened a school which rapidly became very successful, for girls 01 well to do parents, and soon nddod to it a charitv school for the daughters of the poor. ' To rtcse labors she added the education of her young brothers and the nursing of the grandmother, wit.i the natural" result that her health broke down, and her school had to be abandoned. 'Tt was not until she was nearly 40 t'.iat the death of her grandmother placed her in easy circumstances, and thereafter she devoted herself to a lite of ■philanthropy. By holding a class for the female convicts m a prison sjic discovered that guilty, innocent and insane women were mixed up togetjn, and was thus led to investigate tie treatment of the insane, .0 the amelioration of whose lives he? own was thenceforth devoted. She began 'ny predentin® a petition or memorial to the Legislature of the State of Massachusetts. praying earnestly for the improvement'of the treatment of the mUne in the State. She was met, of course, by opposition, abuse, ridicule, detraction', and all the weapons by which reformers always arc assailed, hut she held on, and was completely successful. An act was passed for the constitution of a State hospital r or he insane. After this she went from State to State investigating for herself the treatment of the insane, and when she found it defective, as she always did, arousing public opinion to have it ameliorated. At length, in IS«!. encouraged by hc-r success with State Legislatures, she attacked Congress itself. and actually induced the Congress of the United States to pass a Bill for the appropriation of 10.000,000 acres of the public domain for the care of the indigent insane. Tito Bill was vetoed k>v the President, but to have achieved its passage through both Houses of Consrress was an astonishing triumph.— The "Hospital."