In this day of pitying and enlightened treatment of the insane, it is difficult to realize the barbarities which they were called upon to endure a century ago. They were regarded almost as wild beasts, were kept chained in foul and loathsome places, fed with mouldy bread, filthy water, and allowed to die the most miserable death. For everyone used to believe that insanity was a mark of God's displeasure, and the outcast from His heart became equally an outcast from the hearts of men. The insane were regarded with fear and loathing, and it was not until the beginning of the nineteenth century that such men as Dr. Channing began to insist on the presence in human nature, even in its most degraded condition, of grains of good. It was from Dr. Channing that Dorothea Lynde Dix drank in this theory with passionate faith, and proceeded at once to convert it into action. She was governess of Dr. Channing's children, and had long been interested in bettering the condition of convicts; but now her attention was turned to the insane and she proceeded at once to master the whole question of insanity, its origin, its development, and its treatment, so far as it was then known. Enlisting the aid of a number of broad-minded men, among them Charles Sumner, she went to work. In one prison, she found two insane women, each confined in a small cage of planks; others were locked in closets, cellars, and stalls; some of them were naked, some were chained, some were regularly beaten and scourged. With all her data at hand, she addressed a memorial to the Massachusetts legislature, setting forth, in page after page, the details of these almost incredible horrors, which she herself had witnessed.