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Nursing During The Civil War

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Nursing; the silent hero of the modern and past world. Nurses tend to be overlooked in the grand scheme of the medical world. Doctors are generally held higher in the hierarchy of hospitals, while one may think nurses simply check their blood pressure and give them shots. That assumption can not be more wrong. Nurses are the backbone of a hospital, and they have worked hard over hundreds of years to get to where they are today. Strong people (women specifically) spearheaded the new age of nursing, from the American Red Cross to hospitals across the United States. The turning point, specifically, was the civil war. The first war that women could serve in; the war that changed war forever. Nursing during the civil war set the precedents for modern-day …show more content…

Even today, where a woman earns less than a man for doing the same work, women have not given up the fight. During the civil war, women being able to officially serve in the military as nurses was a great victory. At the time, jobs for women were meager. Women were expected to stay home and take care of the children. They weren’t typically the breadwinners. However, when the civil war began, many women did not want to feel useless at home. They wanted to help their brothers, husbands, and sons on the battlefield. A viable option to do so was through nursing. Though the exact number of women who offered their services is unknown, estimates say between 5,000-10,000 were enrolled. (Pbs.org 3/13). Those nurses were showing the world that they were capable of more than just sitting at home. It is pitiful that they even had to prove themselves, but they did anyways. And continuously did so. Women during the civil war served a variety of capacities, as trained professional nurses giving direct medical care, as hospital administrators, or offering comfort. (Pbs.org 3/13). Many powerful women of medicine were bred from the harsh circumstances of the Civil War as well. With the times changing and bringing with it a new form of nursing, new faces started leaving their influence. One such woman was Dorothea Dix. She was appointed the position of Superintendent of Female Nurses in June of 1861. She was designated her position by the secretary of war, Simon Cameron (Pbs.org

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