Dorothea Dix: A Voice For The Suffering Who Cannot Be Heard By Melissa Borowicki, Wagner College ’16 “I come to present the strong daims of suffering humanity. I come to place before the Legislature of Massachusetts the condition of the miserable, the desolate, the outcast, I come as the advocate of helpless, forgotten, insane and idiotic men and women; of beings, sunk to a condition from which the most unconcerned would start with real horror; of beings wretched in our prisons, and more wretched in our Alms-Houses. And I cannot suppose it needful to employ earnest persuasion, or stubborn argument in order to arrest and fix attention upon a subject only the more strongly pressing in its claims, because it is revolting and disgusting in its details.” Growing up with a mother of mental health problems it came very close to Dorothea’s heart when she visited the...