Dorothea Lynde Dix
Photograph
Southworth & Hawes
Maker
Albert Sands Southworth, American, 1811–1894; Josiah Johnson Hawes, American, 1808–1901
Dorothea Lynde Dix
1849
Daguerreotype
Image (whole plate): 8 1/2 × 6 9/16 in. (21.6 × 16.6 cm)
Gift of Alden Scott Boyer
1974.0193.0037
Inscriptions stamped in metal on recto, URC: *[illegible]40
inscribed in orange grease pencil on verso, C: 14229-7
inscribed in orange grease pencil on verso, C: 14229-7
TextDorothea Lynde Dix was an early American mental health advocate. She was one of the first medical practitioners to promote a belief in the humanity of people with mental illness. Dix rejected the scientific consensus that insanity was incurable. She lobbied politicians and called on the public to demand changes. To inspire empathy, she described how people deemed “insane” had been confined in the eighteenth century, recounting shocking “scenes of sexual and physical abuse in explicit detail.” Her efforts led to the establishment of 32 asylums throughout the United States.
—Label text, History of Photography [Rotation 15]
—Label text, History of Photography [Rotation 15]
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