6. Dorothea Lynde Dix
Dorothea Dix is best known for creating the first mental health system in the United States. Inspired by a trip to England, Dix returned to America curious how the US government treated the mentally unstable. Dix spent many year petitioning Congress, drafting legislation, and documenting her visits to various states.
Dix first succeeded with the construction of the North Carolina State Medical Society in 1849, dedicated to the care of the mentally ill. Dix also assisted with legislation that called for 12,225 acres of land to be used for the “insane,” with proceeds of its sale going to build mental asylums.
During the Civil War, Dix served as superintendent of the Union Army Nurses, although she was eventually relieved of her duties after butting heads with Army doctors. She was a staunch believer in caring for everyone, though, and her nurses were some of the only caretakers of Confederate soldiers.
1. Florence Nightingale
2. Margaret Sanger
3. Clara Barton
4. Mary Eliza Mahoney
5. Anna Caroline Maxwell
6. Dorothea Lynde Dix
7. Ellen Dougherty
8. Mabel Keaton Staupers
9. Linda Richards
10. Claire Bertschinger
Next up: The world’s first Registered Nurse, Ellen Dougherty…
For more Inspiration and Stories pick up the latest issue of Scrubs magazine, available at a retail store near you!
what an inspiring website! I have been a nurse for 34 years Now I work as an educator for iCU nurses in Bloomington, Indiana. Nice to see the varied reponses and information posted here.
Nice to see Ellen Dougherty’s photograph on your site, wonderful lady, I have all her history, and on January 10th, 2010 it will mark the 109th anniversary of her becoming No.1 Registered Nurse in the World, I shall be at her graveside with a bouquet of flowers.. I have seen her medal, No.1..
Adele.
Clareville Cemetery Researcher. NZ
This article makes me want to aspire to achieve great things.
I love this post! Sometimes we need to have a quick review of history, so we know where we are heading.
My personal favorite is Mary Breckinridge-inspiring and courageous!
Yes, Margaret Sanger was influential,but not for the better.She was a Eugenist and opened the door to a sexual revolution and Planned Parenthood’s slaughter of unborn children.
“Birth control must lead ultimately to a cleaner race.”
– Margaret Sanger. Woman, Morality, and Birth Control . New York: New
York Publishing Company, 1922. Page 12.
“There is only one reply to a request for a higher birthrate among the
intelligent, and that is to ask the government to first take the burden of
the insane and feeble-minded from your back. [Mandatory] sterilization for
these is the answer.”
– Margaret Sanger, October 1926 Birth Control Review .
“[Slavs, Latin, and Hebrew immigrants are] human weeds … a
deadweight of human waste … [Blacks, soldiers, and Jews are a] menace to
the race.”
“Eugenic sterilization is an urgent need … We must prevent
Multiplication of this bad stock.”
– Margaret Sanger, April 1933 Birth Control Review .
“[Our objective is] unlimited sexual gratification without the burden
of unwanted children … [Women must have the right] to live … to love
… to be lazy … to be an unmarried mother … to create … to destroy
… The marriage bed is the most degenerative influence in the social order
… The most merciful thing that a family does to one of its infant members
is to kill it.”
– Margaret Sanger (editor). The Woman Rebel , Volume I, Number 1.
Reprinted in Woman and the New Race . New York: Brentanos Publishers,
What inspeational ladies working to promote nursing and not giving up inspire us all to succeed
You may not agree with Margaret Sanger and Planned Parenthood, but if it weren’t for her, you may not have the right to take your birth control pill and limit the size of your family. I salute all the great women in our nursing past.
Many do not realize that Margaret Sanger’s passion for reproductive health stemmed from a desire to limit the family sizes of those she believed to be genetically less desirable (minorities.). She was an unabashed eugenist with ideologies similar to Hitler’s. I believe that the technology and pharmacology for family planning would have naturally occurred as a demand by our increasingly technical and industrialized society.
……you forgot Lillian Wald who founded The Henry Street Visiting Nurses in N.Y. without whom there wouldn’t have been a Public Health Nursing service!
The one biggest thing that ALL of these nurses have in common is that they were willing to PERSONALLY ‘buck the system’ in order to change the status-quo.
Something that many of us who stand up for doing the right thing are bullied and persecuted for today.
It is EASY to ‘go with the flow’, but HARD to ‘walk the walk AND talk the talk’.