Memorial of D.L. Dix : praying a grant of land for the relief and support of the indigent curable and incurable insane in the United States.

  • Dix, Dorothea Lynde, 1802-1887.
Date:
[1848]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Memorial of D.L. Dix : praying a grant of land for the relief and support of the indigent curable and incurable insane in the United States. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    riots and firemen's mobs in Philadelphia; and the last presidential elec- tions throughout the country levied heavily on the mental health of its citizens. Abroad, discontents in Scotland, civil and religious; agitations in Wales, social and civil; wide-spread disturbances in the manufacturing and agricultural districts of England; tumultuous and riotous gatherings in Ireland—all have left abiding evidence of their mischievous influence upon the records of every hospital for the insane. France, too, unfolds a melan- choly page of hospital history. Subsequent to the bloody revolution which marked the close of the eighteenth century, the hospitals for the insane were thronged, showing that where the effect of exalted mental excite- ment failed to produce insanity in the parents, it was developed in the children, and children's children—a fearful legacy, and sure I The political disturbances which convulsed Canada, several years since, were followed by like results. In law, idiots are ranked with the insane. I have remarked, throughout our country, several prevailing causes of organic idiocy; of these the most common, and the most surely traced, is intemperance of parents, and the marriage and intermarriage of near relatives and kindred. Abounding examples exist on every side throughout the land. In calculating the statistics of mental aberration, from the best authorities, it is found impossible to arrive at exactly correct results; approximation to facts is all that can be attained. There is less maniacal insanity in the southern than in the northern States, for which disparity various causes may be assigned. Two leading causes, obvious to every mind, is the much larger amount of negro pop- ulation, and the much less influx of foreigners, in the former than in the atter. While the, tide of immigration sets towards the north Atlantic States with almost overwhelming force, one cannot witness the fact and not note its sequence. Our hospitals for the insane are already receiving a vast population of uneducated foreigners; and most of these, who become the subjects of in- sanity, present the most difficult and hopeless, because the least curable cases. Take for example the ^following records, which are gathered from the city hospitals for the insane poor, passing by for the present all the State and general hospitals: In 1846, the Boston City Hospital for the insane poor received 169 patients; 90 of which were foreigners, 35 natives of other States, and 44 alone resi- dents of the city. Qf the 90 foreigners, 70 were Irish. The New York City Hospital for the insane poor, on Blackwell's island, which went into opera- intemperance, 14 religious anxiety, 12 domestic afflictions, 10 pecuniary troubles. Of 1,247 patients received at the Hartford Retreat, 103 became insane through intemperance, 178 through ill health, 110 through religious anx- iety, 65 through trouble and disappointment, 46 puerperal. Irreligion, and the abuse of religion, are frequently the cause of insan- ity and suicide. Pure religion, more than any other power, tends to ar- rest, and assists to cure insanity. Of this fact there is constant evidence and illustration abroad in society, and within the limits of every well organized asylum.