This handwritten letter describes the conditions inside a Civil War regimental hospital and the efforts of nurses to provide care during widespread outbreaks of disease. The writer lists scarlet fever, typhoid fever, measles, and whooping cough as illnesses that filled the hospital tents, noting how the sick were “so dreadfully dirty” that it was “the most pitiful sight I ever looked upon.” Many of the soldiers she treated were young men far from home, and the emotional weight of caring for them is clear throughout her writing.
One of the most important contributions described in this letter is the establishment of a military laundry system. The writer explains that she helped start what became the Army’s first organized laundry, washing “25 army blue suits” for hospitalized soldiers. The improvement in cleanliness was so dramatic that surgeons and colonels declared the laundries “indispensable.” This small detail reveals a larger transformation: wartime necessity pushed nurses to reorganize hospital care, enforce sanitation, and protect patients’ health in ways that modern medical systems still depend on.
This letter gives us an intimate look not just at the suffering of war, but at the compassion, leadership, and resilience of the women who served on the medical front lines
For visitors interested in reading more, the complete set of pages from this letter is preserved in the Clara Barton Papers at the Library of Congress, and can be viewed in full at: https://www.loc.gov/resource/mss19224.00309/
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