"Familiarity with suffering, it is said, blunts the sensibilities, and where neglect once finds a footing, other injuries are multiplied. this is not all, for it may justly and strongly be added that, from the deficiency of adequate means to meet the wants of these cases, it has been an absolute impossibility to do justice to this matter. Prisons are not constructed in view of being converted into county hospitals, and almshouses are not founded as receptacles for the insane. And yet, in the face of justice and common sense, wardens are by law compelled to receive, and the masters of almshouses not to refuse, insane and idiotic subjects in all stages of mental disease and privation."
The author of this speech is Dorothea Dix, who was presenting the conditions that she witnessed inside the mental asylums and jails of Massachussetts. Her position on the reform was that she fully believed in it, and believed that prisons and asylums must be separated, and the quality of the asylums must get better. In her speech, she was trying to get the Massachussetts Legislature to agree with her point of view and help to create better quality asylums. This source is very trustworthy because it is a speech that the leader of the movement made. The document does not give a complete picture of the event because it shows Dorothea's side, but does not show how the legislature reacted to her. Dorothea is trying to persuade the legislature to make the asylums better and more safe, and uses examples of the horrible conditions they are currently in to do so.
American History, s.v. "Dorothea Dix: Report on the Insane (1843)," accessed January 19, 2015. http://americanhistory.abc-clio.com/.
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