The course of Dix's life changed in 1841, when she started showing Sunday school at the East Cambridge Jail, a ladies' jail. She found the horrifying treatment of the detainees, especially those with maladjustments, whose living quarters had no warmth. She instantly went to court and secured a request to give warmth to the detainees, alongside different upgrades.
Dix came back to the United States in 1856. At the point when the Civil War softened out up 1861, she volunteered her administrations and was named director of attendants. She was in charge of setting up field doctor's facilities and emergency treatment stations, selecting attendants, overseeing supplies and setting up preparing projects. Despite the fact that she was effective and centered, numerous discovered her unbending, without the social abilities that were important to explore the military's administration.
After the war, she quickly came back to her work for the benefit of the rationally sick. She contracted intestinal sickness in 1870 and was compelled to forsake forceful voyaging, in spite of the fact that she kept on composing, campaigning for her causes. She took up home at the healing center she had established 40 years prior in Trenton, New Jersey, and kicked the bucket there on July 17, 1887.