Nursing is a profession that has been around since the nineteenth century. “The first nurses began by caring for injured men during the Civil War” (Dzubak, 2016). During the Civil War, there was a tremendous amount of wounded soldiers who needed to be cared for. Since the men were fighting in the war, the Union and the Confederacy both realized the need for female nurses to care for the injured men. The purpose of this paper is to determine the beginning of nursing during the war, explore the work of the United States Sanitary Commission and the Women’s Central Association of Relief, and to explore the evolution of nurses’ roles during the war. The Civil War was the start of nursing in the United States. “Before the war, wounded individuals …show more content…
Initially the perception of nurses working by the Army was negative. “Women working in army hospitals are objects of continual evil and have a very uncertain, semi-legal position, with poor wages and little sympathy” (Robertson, 2012). Doctors and physicians described nurses as “old hags” who surround the army surgeon. Army nurses did not always have the most experience, but they saw what needed improvement and sometimes challenged the surgeons and hospital staff regarding what they viewed as cruel treatment of soldiers (Robertson, 2012). Ever since the beginning of nursing, one of the most important aspects of nursing is being a patient advocate. Female nurses may not have been accepted at the hospitals on land, female nurses were welcomed on the USSC hospital transport ships. The organizer of the ships believed that female nurses were able to provide a “home away from home” for the injured soldiers (Robertson, 2012). The nurses were “responsible for organizing food and accommodations on board, tending to soldiers’ needs, and assisting the medical staff. The doctors and nurses on the ship were caring for thousands of sick and dying
The role nurses played during the Civil War was truly an extensive one, as the war carried the most casualties in American history and so many more injuries. Despite their invaluable work, though, their experiences have not been related in depth. Civil War Nurse: The Diary and Letters of Hannah Ropes by Joseph Brumgardt is a much-desired addition to the primary collection depicting the story of the United States medical corps during the Civil War. The book’s thesis claims that these men and women who served in the medical end of the conflict deserve attention as full participants in the war rather than as mere helpers of the main actors, more interesting than substantial. As evidence of this, the book focuses on the story of Hannah Ropes, who
“There had been sickness aplenty from the start, deadly "camp fever," which grew worse as summer went on. Anxious mothers and wives from the surrounding towns and countryside came to nurse the sick and dying.” (Chapter 2) The woman that volunteered to nurse in the army had the main thought of keeping their own families safe, not the idea of
The Great War was a long and dangerous journey in which there was a lot of death and sadness. Many people contributed in different ways, whether they fought, nursed, volunteered or took over the jobs of those who had gone to fight. Since all the men went to fight in the war, they needed women to start taking over their jobs. Women started working in factories and jutting out of domestic roles. One of the many women who had significantly contributed towards the Great War included a nurse named Laura Adelaide Gamble, who will be further explored throughout this report.
The nurses were titled as an equal rank to the army, as both services were equally important to the military operation, however, despite the equal rank, the nurses were paid half of what the male officers and the army received. The nurses’ had to receive financial support from their families while they were away due to these highly low wages (insert reference). This negatively suggests that the importance of the nurses’ work and their contribution during the Gallipoli campaign was not highly valued. Another government source says that the nurses’ worked in different countries on ships and hospitals under deplorable and unhygienic conditions, and some also worked closer to the front line, where they could be killed. For their valuable contribution, many were ‘decorated,’ meaning awarded for bravery, and eight nurses received the Military Medal, and as it may seem there were highly valued, this proves that not all nurses were recognized for their hard work and contribution (insert reference).
Thier work directly lowered the American casualty mortality rate. Amongst the many lives lost, around 201 nurses died serving in the war. Veteran nurses brought home valuable skills due to their experiences. This increased their professionalism and self esteem. Nurses in the army had been trained in specialities like anesthesia and psychiatric care which proved to be valuable even after
Chapter 4: What Nurses Did in the South Before the Civil War, women south served as the nurses to their immediate families only. For those that lived on rather large plantations, they were the nurses for the children, husbands as well as their slaves. The vast majority of southern women were well versed and comfortable caring for those who are sick and injured. More often than not, nursing in the south was considered to be their “sovereign duty” or just “women’s work”.
With men being pulled from jobs to fight in the war, it was necessary for women to take over traditionally male dominated jobs. Many women enjoyed this time of working outside of the home, and when the wars were done, had a difficult time returning to their previous lives. Nursing remained a profession in the inter and post war years that was still acceptable for respectable women to work in. This became a source of a movement that was seeing more women work outside of the home than in previous generations. While a lot of women saw this as an intermediary step until they were married, many more saw it as a valuable asset to be had.
As Canadians continue to risk their lives in the Great War, it is often easy to overlook the valiant individuals who work behind the trenches, such as the nurses, who are the ones tending for wounded soldiers. They continue to work hard, and similarly to the war, don’t appear to be stopping anytime
Young, white females with a secondary school education, the traditional population of nursing students, was exactly the same group heavily recruited by war-related industries. The Cadet Nurse Corps created by the 1943 Bolton Act, a program that ran through to 1948, provided funding and financial support for nursing students with much larger federal funds for both students and hospitals than had previously been allocated. The objective of the Cadet Nurse Corps was increasing the number of students within nursing education programs to maintain nursing services to hospitalized patients. During the war, the use of some types of nurse assistive personnel, such as ward maids, nurse aides, and orderlies increased dramatically (University of Pennsylvania). It is clear why nurses and other medical professionals were important during the war.
Retrieved November 29, 2017, from docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/velaquez/ill1.html Female Soldiers in the Civil War. (n.d.). Retrieved November 25, 2017, from https://www.civilwar.org/learn/articles/female-soldiers-civil-war Gardner, J. (n.d.). Fredericksburg, Va. Nurses and officers of the U.S. Sanitary Commission [Digital image].
Female nurses during the American Revolution were innovative and came up with new ways to help treat soldiers. Some nurses were hesitant to take nursing jobs, as the rate of mortality for caregivers was very high ("The Roles of Women in the Revolutionary War", 2018). The most common roles for women were domestic roles such as seamstresses, maids, laundresses, water bearers, and cooks. Like nursing jobs, the army recruited female camp followers to fill these jobs. Most of these women were poor wives, mothers and daughters.
They could’ve stayed in their comfortable homes in safety but instead they decided to get involved and put themselves at risk like true heroes. Major Events: People: Point of View: Combat Nurses of World War 2 is a collection of stories about nurses around the world. This story is told in third person omniscient. It tells the stories of many nurses around the world. Sometimes the narrator tells you how the nurses felt.
Over two thousand two hundred Australian civilian nurses volunteered to serve as army nurses in World War 1. These nurses constantly cleaned, bandaged and consoled hundreds of patients whom had ghastly wounds or were suffering from dreadful diseases.
In the mid-1800s, as America was growing, socially, and economically, there was a higher demand for nurses due to people getting hurt more often. During the Civil War of 1861 many soldiers, from both the Union and the south, were traumatically injured. An Abundance of nurses were needed to compensate the massive number of patients. One African American woman had a passion for people and the drive to make a difference. Mary Eliza Mahoney was born May 7, 1845.
In her attention getter Fowler(2016) opens her article with she stated “ Modern American nursing arose during the Civil War” (p. S9) did not support the topic (Fowler, 2016, p.S9). Fowler structures her essay to begin with a history lesson, she leaves her audience, who most likely already have background knowledge of the history of nursing, bored and uninterested in her article and as a result of Fowler’s irrelevant synopsis of the history of nursing, she did not