Douglas Bly’s Improved Artificial Leg, Patented 05/19/1863
Circular Letter Setting Out Requirements for Proper Measures to Secure the Identification of Soldiers Dying in Hospital Under Their Charge, 01/29/1863
From the Circular Letters file of the Office of the Surgeon General
Vaccination clinics like this one in Tazewell County, Virginia helped to eliminate smallpox. World-wide efforts were so successful that on December 9, 1979 it was declared eradicated.
Miner’s children being given pre-school examination and being vaccinated for smallpox by Dr. Tiernan, company doctor. Jewell Ridge Coal Company, Jewell Ridge Mine, Jewell Ridge, Tazewell County, Virginia., 08/01/1946
George B. Jewett’s Artificial Leg, patented Aug. 22, 1865
International Nurses Day is celebrated every May 12, the anniversary of Florence Nightingale’s birth.
Louisa May Alcott (November 29, 1832 - March 6, 1888) - Civil War Nurse
via Prologue: Pieces of History » Little Women in the Civil War
About 20,000 women volunteered in military hospitals during the Civil War. Unfortunately, the majority of them left little or no written evidence of their sacrifice in the war. Louisa May Alcott, renowned 19th-century author of Little Women, was one of them, and her service is documented in a Washington, D.C., hospital’s muster roll.
As her muster roll indicates, she was stationed at the “Union Hotel U.S.A. General Hospital,” a makeshift military hospital in “Georgetown, D.C.” She served under the superintendent of Union Army nurses, Dorothea Dix, as a “female nurse” for November and December 1862 and received ten dollars pay.
Her time as a nurse later served as the foundation for her novel Hospital Sketches (1863). The novel, a fictionalized account composed from letters written home during the war, was her first bestseller.
What’s your favorite Louisa May Alcott book?
PENICILLIN… SAVES SOLDIERS’ LIVES!
Penicillin, one of the earliest successful antibiotics, was first isolated and identified by Alexander Fleming on September 28, 1928, for which he would receive the Nobel Prize in Medicine. This World War II-era poster shows one lucky recipient (although he may want to reconsider that cigarette).
