Hospital Sketches

Content Warning: The section of the guide includes discussion of illness and death.

Nurse Periwinkle’s day begins with the arrival of injured troops. Hearing “they’ve come!” she initially fears “the rebels” and springs from her bed to die “on the ramparts” (19) if necessary. Her roommate calmly explains that 40 ambulances have arrived with soldiers wounded from Fredericksburg. The nurses will need to wash, dress, feed, and comfort them, a process that will occupy them throughout the day.

After three days of experience, Alcott has a sense of what will be expected of her. She initially looks forward to the wounded arriving, but after spending her days surrounded by illness and death, she “indulged in a most unpatriotic” (20) longing for quiet days at home. After her roommate hurries out, a child pops into her room to summon her, and she goes out to meet her duties.

Leaving her room, her first impression is of “the vilest odors” (20), which she has been warned is a fixture of hospitals. She bears it by sprinkling herself and everything around her with lavender water. Making her way through the bustling area, she arrives in the main hall where the wounded, “our brave boys” (21), await. Their bodies are riddled with injuries and some have lost limbs, but before receiving a bed and care, they must be processed. Feeling overwhelming pity for what they have been through at Fredericksburg, the author dares not speak to them but longs to serve them, until she is called to undress and wash them.

The author describes the soldiers she tends. First is an Irishman whose feet are so caked in mud that she cannot tell where his socks end and his feet begin. They laugh together over his exaggerated expressions and exclamations. The “comical tableau” (22) gives her heart, and she works away as soldiers lean against her, are scandalized, or blush. One solider wears a camphor bag from his mother as a talisman, and when the author notes that it did not save him, he disagrees, saying that without it, the shot that hit him would have gone deeper. Another soldier who was shot in the cheek asks for a mirror and wonders what his sweetheart will say. She responds that “if Josephine was a girl of sense,” she would admire his scar as “the best decoration a soldier could wear” (23). She notes that she will never know if her “good opinion” of the woman was proven true.

One soldier, whom she calls “the little Sergeant” (23), has a missing leg and a mangled arm that will likely be amputated. His good humor despite his condition brings her to tears, prompting him to comfort her. She laughs with him, reflecting that the dour Chaplain roaming the hall will think her a sinner. A gravely wounded soldier points out a rebel soldier, urging her not to wash or feed him. As a “red-hot Abolitionist” (24), the author privately resolves to give him a rough washing but is not given the chance; he rejects her offer of assistance.

After all the soldiers are washed and dressed, the nurses and other attendants feed the grateful men. The soldiers share comic and tragic accounts of their experiences in battle, more graphic than any a journalist has given. After sharing his story with the author, a soldier offers her earrings and a pin looted from homes in Fredericksburg after the battle, “to memorize the rebs by” (27), but she accepts only the earrings. A young man asks her for water, but by the time she brings it to him, he has died.

The surgeons’ rounds follow the meal, and the author learns how to dress wounds. The surgeon, a veteran of the Crimea, goes about his work dispassionately with an apparently acute understanding that makes him fascinating to watch. She reflects on the extraordinary fortitude and patience of the suffering soldiers.

After the surgeon has completed his work, her next task is to help the soldiers write letters home, answer any questions they may have, read papers, and package and label their possessions to prevent them from being pilfered. The author notes that the soldiers’ letters could provide content for “some future history of the war” (29). Dinner is at 5 in the evening, followed by another doctor’s visit. Medicines are dispensed, faces washed, beds smoothed, and lullabies sung. At 11 o’clock, her work is complete, and it is bedtime.