Memorial soliciting a state hospital for the insane : submitted to the legislature of Alabama, November 15, 1849.

  • Dorothea Dix
Date:
1849
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Memorial soliciting a state hospital for the insane : submitted to the legislature of Alabama, November 15, 1849. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    rative treatment of the insane; into 13 of these were admitted in one year 1,213 patients, and the entire nu.nber under treatment at the same time was 2,690. Of trfese, a very large number were, of the middle and poorest classes, being rendered incurably insane through previous unfit treatment, but a portion were successfully recovered to the accustomed use of their reason. Of those who received early, sufficient and prompt hospital care, and who were perfectly restored to society, to usefulness, and high places of trust and influence, I might, if it were proper in this place to name them, indicate several members of Congress, and members of several ol our State Legislatures. I have seen hundreds of patients restored to their health and returned to the enjoyments and blessings of domestic life; and I have seen thousands living in misery, wearing life slowly out in dungeons, in cells, in cages, in pens, in barns and outhouses, exposed to every variation of weather, filthy and neglected, abandoned of friends, cared for with less considera- tion than the oxen in the stall, or the swine in the sly; melancholy monu- ments of the imperfec.tness with which society discharges its social and moral obligations. I have said that rmst of the institutions for the insane are filled to their utmost capacity, showing yet another incontrovertible argument in favor of adopting not only hospital treatment, hut early, timely, treatment. One find another may, perhaps, exclaim as this plea for the wretched comes be- fore him, with a seriousness and solemnity which will not be denied,—our taxes are already a burthen, how shall we bear their increase 1 To these apprehensive and querulous spirits it may be answered as on one occasion by the discerning Franklin, when the citizens once in his times raised the popular cry against increased taxation : Recollect that thertaxes imposed by Government are not the only taxes which you pay; self gratifications tlie indulgence of luxuries, the lavish expenditures of daily life, are taxes from which neither commissioners nor assessors can deliver the payer.— And I may add, in the present case, that 'procrastination in the execution i fa necessary work ma}- impose upon the present and the future, as it has done upon the past, in this State, as in others, a burthen, a perpetual tax, from which there will be no relief. As the expenses of a war are never cancelled, witness that of the Revolution, fir which con.-equent expenses, drafts are annually made on the Treasury, in the form of pensions and compensations ; so works of necessity and obligation delayed, impose upon posterity a perpetual lax as vexatious as ir is burthensome. Oilier camples too recent and too obvious to require exposition, give force to my illustration. Also, society must pay the tax levied by its false modes oflife, its defec- ive organization, its self-indulgence and its self-will in the frequent results ofthese — poverty and insanity. Much unsoundness of mind originates in the ceaseless activity which sways all classes of society throughout the civilized world. To act and not to reflect, is the characteristic of the present age ; sentiment and im- pulse take, to a considerable extent, the place of thought. Improvements in the mechanic arts, developments in science, and application of princi- ples facilitating every class and form of mechanical labor, all these, valua-