Nancy Scripture Garrison

Documents the services of a three upper class northern women who worked as nurses for the Sanitary Commission during the Peninsula Campaign of the Civil War. Georgeanna Woolsey, Katharine Wormeley and Eliza Howland were strong minded serious idealists who were willing to defy their conventional upbringings to work in grim conditions because they were so desperately needed. Initially, the Union did not have a competent medical corps, so during the first couple of years of the war the Sanitary show more Commission and its civilian workers (including Frederick Law Olmsted) figured prominently in northern military medical efforts. Well written and well documented, this is one of the better scholarly studies of northern nurses. show less

Well written review of the Sanitary Commission in the Peninsula Campaign of the Civil War and the contribution of Katherine Wormely and the Woolsey sisters.