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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    30th Congress, ^ f [SENATE.] Miscellaneous. ^V w ■)j) ,AP ls£ Session. No. 150. MEMORIAL D. L. DIX, A grant of land for the relief and support of the indigent curable and incurable insane in the United States. June 27, 1848. Referred to a Select Committee, and ordered to be printed, and that 5,000 additional copies be printed for the use of the^Senate. To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States in Con- gress assembled. Your memorialist respectfully asks permission to lay before you what seem to be just and urgent claims in behalf of a numerous and increasing class of sufferers in the United States. I refer to the great and inade- quately relieved distresses of the insane throughout the country. Upon the subject to which this memorial refers, many to whose justice and humanity it appeals are well-informed; but the attention of many has not been called to the subject, and a few, but a very few, have looked upon some features of this sad picture as revealed in private dwellings, in poor- houses, and in prisons. Your memorialist hopes to place before you substantial reasons which shall engage your earnest attention, and secure favorable action upon the important subject she advocates. It is a fact, not less certainly substantiated than it is deplorable, that insanity has increased in an advanced ratio with the fast increasing popu- lation in all the United States. For example, according to the best re- ceived methods of estimate five years since, it was thought correct to count one insane in every thousand inhabitants throughout the Union. At the present, my own careful investigations are sustained by the judgment and the information of the most intelligent superintendents of hospitals for the insane, in rendering the estimates not less than one insane person in every eight hundred inhabitants at large, throughout the United States. There are, in proportion to numbers, more insane in cities than in large towns, and more insane in villages than among the same number of inhab- itants dwelling in scattered settlements. Wherever the intellect is most excited, and health lowest, there is an increase of insanity. This malady prevails most widely, and illustrates its presence most commonly in mania, in those countries whose citizens pos- sess the largest civil and religious liberty; where, in effect, every indi- Tippin & Streeper, printers.