History of the US Army Nurse Corp. Part One ...

History of the US Army Nurse Corp.

Part One

Pre-1901

An Army Department circular order established the designation of Nurse

During the American Civil War, the United States Sanitary Commission, a federal civilian agency, handled most of the medical and nursing care of the Union armies, together with necessary acquisition and transportation of medical supplies. Dorothea Dix, serving as the Commission’s Superintendent, was able to convince the medical corps of the value of women working in their hospitals. A famous figure was Clara Barton, whose Civil War nursing efforts had earned her the names “Angel of the Battlefield” or the “American Nightingale.” In 1882, Barton helped found and served as the first president of the American Chapters of the International Red Cross.

During the 1898 Spanish-American War, the Army hired female civilian nurses to help with the wounded. Dr. Anita Newcomb McGee was put in charge of selecting contract nurses to work as civilians with the U.S. Army. In all, more than 1,500 women nurses worked as contract nurses during that 1898 conflict.

World War 1

In World War I the military recruited 20,000 registered nurses (all women) for military and navy duty in 58 military hospitals; they helped staff 47 ambulance companies that operated on the Western Front. More than 10,000 served overseas, while 5,400 nurses enrolled in the Army’s new School of Nursing. The women were kept well back from the front lines, and although none were killed by enemy action, more than 200 had died from disease, especially influenza. Julia Flikke, the assistant superintendent of nurses at a Chicago hospital, enlisted and became chief nurse at an Army hospital in France, then served on a hospital train that rushed casualties from the field hospitals to the long-term care hospitals.

….Part one…