Hospital Sketches from the Civil War by Louisa May Alcott
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I’ve always enjoyed Alcott’s writing, but somehow had never heard of this book until my wife came across it at a bookstore. This book is autobiographical although Alcott doesn’t reveal the name of the hospital or the actual names of her patients. The tone starts out in a very dramatic and somewhat humorous fashion. In some ways it feels like Alcott is satirizing the fact that all women could do to support the war effort is be nurses and, while that’s an important role, it’s not the same as putting your life on the line like the soldiers.
For those who don’t know, Alcott served for a time as a nurse in D.C. until she contracted typhoid fever and left the hospital to convalesce back home in Massachusetts. Sadly, she never really recovered from the “cure” for typhoid fever, i.e. mercury poisoning. It’s an interesting experience reading about this time in her life, while in the back of my mind I know what happens afterwards. It adds a certain level of tragedy to it.
The sketches take part in sections detailing her experience: the preparation for the journey, the journey itself, the day shift at the hospital, the Night Shift, and a postscript that addresses questions a readers has been asking as her sketches had been published. The tone that starts out as comical and dramatic takes a more serious shift at the conclusion of the sketches. Personally, I think that interacting with the soldiers and their families showed Alcott that the war wasn’t only for the horrific injuries, but also for the psychological and emotional wounds it inflicted.
Alcott gives voice to an experience we often don’t hear about when considering Civil War literature. The women who worked the hospitals were the vanguard of the burgeoning nursing field and without their service, so many more soldiers would’ve died. Theirs is a valuable story to read.