Difference between revisions of "Portal:Featured Article Of The Week"

From Asylum Projects
Jump to: navigation, search
Line 1: Line 1:
 
{{FAformat
 
{{FAformat
|Title= Chestnut Lodge Sanatarium
+
|Title= Dorothea Lynde Dix
|Image= ChestnutLodge 02.jpg
+
|Image= dorotheadix.jpg
 
|Width= 150px
 
|Width= 150px
|Body= In 1886, Charles G. Willson purchased five acres west of the town of Rockville, hired an architect, and began to build a large, four-story brick "summer boarding house." Before the building was completed, Willson filed for bankruptcy. Among those looking at the building were the Trustees of the Rockville Academy. The unfinished hotel and adjoining three acres were bought for $6,000 by Mary J. Colley, proprietress of the Clarendon Hotel in Washington, D.C., and her partner Charles W. Bell.
+
|Body= All important crises in historical movements are associated with the lives and conduct of marked individuals; persons who have advanced some original or discriminating conception as to duty or public policy, and who, through enthusiasm, strength of purpose and the force of personality, have initiated and conducted to a successful issue a notable departure in government, moral and religious convictions, social habits, or institutional methods.
  
When the Woodlawn Hotel opened for business in the spring of 1889, it was an immediate success. Summer guests, many of whom were prominent D.C. residents, enjoyed social gatherings, musical soirees, card games, dances, walks among the trees and cool country breezes. Ads for the Woodlawn boasted electric bells, gas lighting, artesian water, fresh country vegetables, breezy porches, and 40 guest rooms. Visitors usually came by train, traveling the mile from the railroad station to the hotel by carriage.
+
The history of insanity, in conformity with this universal law, has its conspicuous pioneers, its epoch-making masters, its heros and heroines. In this connection many American specialists are entitled to more or less prominence. But from the standpoint of personal labors to promote practical reforms in public provision for the insane, the work of Dorothea L. Dix stands pre-eminent.
  
Rockville's "boom" continued into 20th century, until a series of depressions deflated the economy. Many summer boarders, such as Edwin and Lucy Smith, decided to build year-round residences on lots in new subdivisions opening around Rockville. They liked living in a small town convenient to federal government jobs in Washington. However, by 1906, the Woodlawn's owners, heavily in debt, had to sell. The hotel, stable, windmill, ice house, carriage house, laundry and servants quarters, and eight acres went to public auction.  [[Chestnut Lodge Sanatarium|Click here for more...]]
+
Her surroundings in childhood were humble and she had a hard struggle to obtain an education, followed by a toilsome period spent in school-teaching. But in spite of these difficulties in her early life and of the semi-invalidism which, later on, hampered her physical activity, she achieved a national and even international reputation as a practical philanthropist, her remarkable personal influence over public officials and governmental policies contributing greatly to her success. In the 40 years of her public work she was instrumental in founding or enlarging more than 30 state institutions for the proper custody and right treatment of the insane, becoming an acknowledged power in this respect not only throughout the United States, but in European countries as well. It is impossible to estimate how many men and women, suffering from mental disease, she extricated or preserved for public jails and private pens, or how many others enjoyed release or exemption from galling chains and other cruel devices for restraint as a result of her humanitarian efforts.  [[Dorothea Lynde Dix|Click here for more...]]
 
}}
 
}}

Revision as of 04:17, 14 November 2011

Featured Article Of The Week

Dorothea Lynde Dix


dorotheadix.jpg

All important crises in historical movements are associated with the lives and conduct of marked individuals; persons who have advanced some original or discriminating conception as to duty or public policy, and who, through enthusiasm, strength of purpose and the force of personality, have initiated and conducted to a successful issue a notable departure in government, moral and religious convictions, social habits, or institutional methods.

The history of insanity, in conformity with this universal law, has its conspicuous pioneers, its epoch-making masters, its heros and heroines. In this connection many American specialists are entitled to more or less prominence. But from the standpoint of personal labors to promote practical reforms in public provision for the insane, the work of Dorothea L. Dix stands pre-eminent.

Her surroundings in childhood were humble and she had a hard struggle to obtain an education, followed by a toilsome period spent in school-teaching. But in spite of these difficulties in her early life and of the semi-invalidism which, later on, hampered her physical activity, she achieved a national and even international reputation as a practical philanthropist, her remarkable personal influence over public officials and governmental policies contributing greatly to her success. In the 40 years of her public work she was instrumental in founding or enlarging more than 30 state institutions for the proper custody and right treatment of the insane, becoming an acknowledged power in this respect not only throughout the United States, but in European countries as well. It is impossible to estimate how many men and women, suffering from mental disease, she extricated or preserved for public jails and private pens, or how many others enjoyed release or exemption from galling chains and other cruel devices for restraint as a result of her humanitarian efforts. Click here for more...