Posts Tagged ‘Civil War nurses’
Confederate Nurses, Part 2
Union Secretary of State Stewart Cameron accepted Dorothea Dix‘s offer to organize an army of nurses without taking the time to define what her position would entail or how she would fit into a military medical bureaucracy, which was itself in a state of transformation. As a result, Dix was in constant conflict with the…
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Confederate Nurses, Pt 1
Both the television show Mercy Street, and Heroines of Mercy Street* look at Civil War nurses through the lens of a single Union hospital, Mansion House Hospital in the occupied city of Alexandria, Virginia. I use the “memoirs” of two women who nursed there, Mary Phinney von Olnhausen and Anne Reading,** as a framework for…
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Amy Morris Bradley: Civil War Shin-kicker
I must admit to a sneaking fondness for the Civil War nurses who found a way to work outside Dorothea Dix’s nursing corps. Some of them, like Cornelia Hancock, were too young and/or too pretty to meet “Dragon Dix”‘s specifications. Others, like Clara Barton, were too independent. Amy Morris Bradley was simply too ornery. When…
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