[On May 21st,
1881, Clara Barton founded the American National Red Cross. So this week
I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of histories and contexts related to nursing and
medical aid, starting with my colleague and friend Irene’s Guest Post on Barton
herself! Add your responses and thoughts for a healthy crowd-sourced weekend
post, please!]
On three texts
through which Whitman wrote about his Civil War experiences as a
volunteer nurse.
1)
“The
Great Army of the Sick” (1863): Only two months into his nursing
experiences, Whitman penned this article for the New York Times, describing at length the conditions in the war
hospitals, using the example of one particular wounded soldier to both detail
the war’s horrors and make a case for the vital role nurses could play in
helping the soldiers recover, and sharing his perspective on the overarching challenges
and value of this work. Perhaps the most interesting line comes toward the end:
“The army is very young—and so much more American than I supposed.” As often with
Whitman, I’m not entirely sure what he means, but I suspect it might have to do
with the variety and diversity of the young men Whitman encountered.
2)
Drum-Taps
(1865): A book of poems about and inspired by the war and his experiences in
it, Drum-Taps is not in any specific way
focused on nursing or the hospital settings or wounded soldiers. But besides
being published after Whitman’s nearly three years of work as a nurse, and so
clearly a response to that stage of his life and career, the book also includes
particular poems like “The
Dresser” (later retitled “The Wound-Dresser”) with lines like, “Bearing the bandages, water and sponge,/Straight and swift to my wounded I go”; or “Hymn of Dead
Soldiers,” undoubtedly inspired by all the wounded Whitman had been unable
to save. This is Whitman’s Civil War book, and Whitman’s Civil War was in the
hospitals.
3)
Memoranda
During the War (1875): A decade after the war and his experiences there
ended, Whitman wrote this autobiographical and sociological study of that time,
expanding greatly on “The Great Army of the Sick” but adding many other layers
as well. The book’s thesis can be summed up by this early quote: “I know not
how it may have been, or may be, to others—to me the main interest of the War,
I found, (and still, on recollection, find,) in those specimens, and in the
ambulance, the Hospital, and even the dead on the field. To me, the points
illustrating the latent Personal Character and eligibilities of These States,
in the two or three millions of American young and middle-aged men, North and
South, embodied in the armies—and especially the one-third or one-fourth of their
number, stricken by wounds or disease at some time in the course of the
contest—were of more significance even than the Political interests involved.”
It’s a powerful idea, and a compelling way to make Whitman’s nursing
experiences into a symbolic emblem of the war’s participants, victims, ideals, and
effects.
Next nursing
post tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Other nursing or medical histories you’d highlight?
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