The Women Who Revolutionized Nursing During the American Civil War

The 1850s and 1860s in America saw the rise of the “sentimental domestic idea.” Women were held up as examples of purity, piety, and submissiveness. In the American antebellum period, precise and strict rules were recommended for women’s socially acceptable and appropriate behavior. But the Civil War would change the social, economic, and political landscape for women from every walk of American life—perhaps nowhere more so than in the field of nursing. Women demonstrated remarkable adaptability in the savagely altered wartime world, responding to the great need of the nation while acquiring and utilizing skills to ease the pain of the country. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] “At the beginning of the war, a ‘nurse’ meant a soldier recovering in hospital from a wound or injury, untrained in healing, who aided doctors with miscellaneous duties,” Dr. Robert D. Hicks of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia explained. “The idea of women handling the bodies of men not related by family was unthinkable. By the end of the war, the term meant women who aided doctors by cleaning and feeding patients and occasionally assisting doctors in their surgeries and treatments.” When the Civil War erupted, the governments of the divided country had not prepared for a lengthy and epic combat situation and its resulting casualties. Arrangements had not been made for transporting or treating tens of thousands of wounde...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized Excerpt health Health Care Source Type: news