The Professionalization of Child Health Care

Growth and Development of a Specialty From: medscape.com By Cindy Connolly Compared to nursing, medicine's road to professionalization and specialization was direct. State licensing acts, passed in every state by 1900, clearly defined the practice of medicine. Between 1864 and 1880, a number of medical specialty organizations began to appear, including ophthalmology, neurology, otology, dermatology, surgery, gynecology, and laryngology. Founded by white males with elite medical educations, being a member of a specialty conferred much prestige upon them as physicians. Specialists had access to appointments at teaching hospitals, a mechanism...

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The Father of American Pediatrics

Dr. Abraham Jacobi, 1830-1919 From: faqs.org The father of American pediatrics, Abraham Jacobi championed children's care in both academic and medical spheres. During his life, every medical school in the United States established a department of pediatrics. Jacobi earned his medical degree at the University of Bonn in 1851. When he traveled to Berlin to take his state medical exams, he was arrested and held in prison for nearly two years on a charge of promoting political and social reform in the German revolution of 1848. Though he viewed his imprisonment as a badge of honor, he left Germany in 1853 to avoid being arrested again. Jacobi...

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The Uniforms of Civil War Nurses

What Did Civil War Nurses Wear? From cwnurses.tripod.com "It seems heartless to see women caring for curls and colors." (Nurse Sarah Palmer, "the worst dressed woman in the whole army") When Dorothea Dix assigned northern women as nurses, she placed restrictions on their type of dress. "All nurses are required to be plain looking women," she stated. "Their dresses must be brown or black, with no bows, no curls, no jewelry, and no hoop-skirts." However, for many nurses of the North or South, such regulations were not significant. As the War progressed, female nurses learned to adapt their clothing to the conditions at hand. Dresses were often...

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Heart Disease During the Civil War

By Glenna R. Schroeder-Lein During the Civil War, as in other eras, some people suffered from congenital or early onset heart defects, including heart murmurs, valve malfunctions, enlargement, and other problems, that caused a recruit to be rejected and a soldier to be discharged, if detected. In the days before electrocardiograms and other modern imaging tests, Civil War doctors relied on the methods of percussion and auscultation. These involved tapping the area of the chest and listening to the resulting sound, such as dullness or shifting fluid, with the ear or with a stethoscope. Although some writers on Civil War medicine have claimed...

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Civil War Nurses: What They Did

From cwnurses.tripod.com "I struggled long and hard with my sense of propriety, with the appalling fact that I was a woman, whispering in one ear, and groans of suffering men, . . . thundering in the other." (Clara Barton) Before we can appreciate the work of the Civil War nurse we need to place them within a contextual framework. We must understand that female nurses did not really exist in America at the time. Unfortunately, women during the mid-nineteenth century faced entirely different roles than women do today. Grace Greenwood, in her 1850 book entitled Greenwood Leaves, claimed that "true feminine genius is ever timid, doubtful, and...

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Study: Combat Trauma Seen in Civil War

Veterans who saw more death had higher rates of postwar illness From: The Associated Press CHICAGO — A look at the medical records of Civil War soldiers suggests post-traumatic stress disorder existed back then, too, according to a study. The researchers found that veterans who saw more death in battle had higher rates of postwar illness. Younger soldiers, including boys as young as 9, were more likely than older ones to suffer mental and physical problems after the war. "Increased war trauma leads to increased physical and mental illness," said study co-author Roxane Cohen Silver of the University of California at Irvine. "That message...

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Hospital Stewards

From: wtv-zone.com The lowest ranking members of Union and Confederate Medical Departments during the Civil War were usually hospital stewards, noncommissioned officers who received the pay and allowance of a sergeant major. Each regiment was authorized to have one hospital steward, who was often chosen by the regimental surgeon from the enlisted men in the unit. Army regulations specified that men selected as hospital stewards had to be of good character: "temperate, honest, and in every way reliable, as well as sufficiently intelligent, and skilled in pharmacy. Temperance was an important quality since one responsibility of the hospital...

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The Irritable Heart

Increased Risk of Physical and Psychological Effects of Trauma in Civil War Vets From K. Kris Hirst Using open source data from a federal project digitizing medical records on veterans of the American Civil War (1860-1865) called the Early Indicators of Later Work Levels, Disease, and Death Project, researchers have identified an increased risk of post-war illness among Civil War veterans, including cardiac, gastrointestinal, and mental diseases throughout their lives. In a project partly funded by the National Institutes of Aging, military service files from a total of 15,027 servicemen from 303 companies of the Union Army stored at the...

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Esther Hill Hawks, Civil War Army Doctor and Teacher

Army Physician During the Civil War From zoominfo.com Dr. Esther Hill Hawks was an army physician and a teacher during the Civil War. A woman ahead of her time, Dr. Hawks taught both freed slaves and whites in what may have been Florida's first interracial school, before returning to New England to practice medicine. ... Dr. Esther Hawks joined him there in 1862. She provided medical care for the blacks and worked as a contract physician in General Hospital Number 10, which was established for black soldiers in nearby Beaufort, South Carolina. In July 1863, she helped care for the black soldiers from the 54th Regiment Massachusetts Colored...

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Kate Cumming, Confederate Nurse and Matron

From The New Georgia Encyclopedia Kate Cumming is best known for her dedicated service to sick and wounded Confederate soldiers. She spent much of the latter half of the Civil War (1861-65) as a nurse in hospitals throughout Georgia. Born in Edinburgh, Scotland, circa 1830 (sources differ on the exact date), Cumming migrated with her family to North America as a young child, stopping first in Montreal, Canada, before permanently settling in Mobile, Alabama. Inspired by both the Reverend Benjamin M. Miller, who in an address urged the women of Mobile in early 1862 to aid wounded and sick Confederates, and by Florence Nightingale, the heroic...

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The Death of Willie Lincoln

From: Abrahamlincolnonline.org In an elegant White House guest room, the 11-year-old son of Abraham and Mary Lincoln lay ill in a huge carved rosewood bed, now known as the Lincoln Bed. At five p.m. on February 20, 1862, William Wallace Lincoln died. Elizabeth Keckly, the former slave who designed Mrs. Lincoln's beautiful wardrobe, washed and dressed him. When the president gazed at him, he mourned, "My poor boy, he was too good for this earth. God has called him home. I know that he is much better off in heaven, but then we loved him so. It is hard, hard to have him die!" She watched him bury his head in his hands, "his tall frame convulsed...

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Health and Medicine During the Civil War

By Elaine Hirsch From: teachthecivilwar.com From 1861 to 1865, the Civil War wreaked havoc on American life. Nearly 620,000 soldiers died and an additional 412,000 were wounded. The massive amount of injuries presented new challenges in the medical field. Hospitals and clinics were overwhelmed with patients, disease was rampant and sanitation practices were no where near as sophisticated as today’s standards. Standardized medical schools did not yet exist and there were less than 100 doctors in the army at the start of the war. These factors presented unique challenges that American hospitals were not prepared to meet. The National Museum...

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The Man Who Killed John Wilkes Booth

Boston Corbett and the Year of the Mad Hatter By Grant/Hankering for History, People & Places/21 Aug 2013 The story of one Boston Corbett is certainly an interesting one–a story full of religious fanaticism, self-castration, and murder. Now that I’ve piqued your interest, let me give you some of the backstory. In 1832, Thomas P. Corbett was born in London, England. Several years later, in 1839, Corbett’s family emigrated to the United States. When Thomas Corbett was old enough to work, he took up the trade of a hatter, in Troy, New York. After the unfortunate death of his wife, Corbett moved to Boston. It was in Boston that Corbett became...

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Willie and Tad Lincoln get the Measles

From: history.com March 20, 1861 On this day in 1861, President Abraham Lincoln's sons, Willie and Tad, are diagnosed with the measles, adding to the president's many troubles. Few U.S. presidents worked as hard in office as Abraham Lincoln did during the Civil War. Besides managing his generals and the war effort, Lincoln had to deal with prospective office-seekers, foreign affairs, and the basic functions of government. The president's third and fourth sons, Willie, born in 1850, and Tad, born in 1853, offered Lincoln a welcome respite from the rigors of the executive office. The playful boys caroused in the White House, invaded cabinet...

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Medicine in the Civil War

From the National Museum of Health and Medicine The spring of 1861 saw the opening shots of the Civil War fired on Fort Sumter, South Carolina. Years of disagreement between the Northern and Southern states over the issues of state's rights, slavery, and the cultural differences dividing industrial and agrarian economies culminated in war. From 1861 until 1865, Union and Confederate armies and navies drew weapons in hundreds of battles from Pennsylvania to New Mexico. Nearly 200,000 men lost their lives from enemy fire during the four years of the war. However, more than 400,000 soldiers were killed by an enemy that took no side-disease. From...

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Report from the Union Medical Director at the Battle of Shiloh

MEDICAL DIRECTOR'S OFFICE, ARMY OF THE OHIO,Camp on Field of Shiloh, April 21, 1862. SIR: I have the honor to submit the following report of the operations of the medical department during and after the battle of the 6th and 7th instant: On the morning of the 6th I was at Savannah, and being ordered to remain at that place, I occupied myself in procuring all the hospital accommodation possible in that small village and in directing the preparation of bunks and other conveniences for wounded. In the afternoon the wounded were brought down in large numbers, and I then superintended their removal to hospitals, and did all in my power to provide...

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Juliet Opie Hopkins “Florence Nightingale of the South”

From: JDRHawkins.com Juliet Opie Hopkins was a pioneer in the advancement of women at a time when most were overlooked for supervisory positions. Her extraordinary abilities awarded her the position of leadership and power that didn’t exist anywhere else. She was born on May 7, 1818 at her family’s Woodburn Plantation in Jefferson County, Virginia. Her father owned around 2,000 slaves, which established him in elite society. During her childhood, she was home-schooled, and was sent to Miss Ritchie’s private school in Richmond when she reached adolescence. When she was sixteen, however, her mother died, so she left school to return home, where...

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What Was Tad Lincoln's Speech Problem?

By John M. HutchinsonJ From: Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association Volume 30, Issue 1, Winter 2009 Thomas "Tad" Lincoln (1853–1871), the fourth son of the sixteenth president, had a speech problem. This came to my attention shortly after assuming the presidency of Lincoln College. In an effort to find out more about the man for whom the college is named, I visited the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Illinois. In the rotunda of the museum are life-sized sculptures of the Lincolns and three of their sons, Robert, William, and Thomas (Tad), which present accurate likenesses of the family as they appeared...

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