Book ID: CBB001252800

On the Field of Mercy: Women Medical Volunteers from the Civil War to the First World War (2010)

unapi

Graf, Mercedes (Author)


Humanity Books


Publication Date: 2010
Physical Details: 335 pp.; ill.; bibl.; index
Language: English

Military women, it has been said, have always been volunteers. In this book, Mercedes Graf shows us that medical women of past eras had to do more than volunteer; they had to actively fight to overcome the entrenched institutional reluctance of military and medical male hierarchies in order to serve. Graf demonstrates the selfless subservience of the women physicians of the Civil and Spanish American Wars, who were forced to work as nurses, and shows us the difficult conditions these women and the nurses themselves, classified as civilians working under contract, endured. Army and Navy nurses served without commissions or rank until after World War I, and women physicians who served during World War I were relegated to civilian contract status. Military medical women, says Graf, frequently served their country to their own detriment, but did it proudly, solely for the sake of their nation.

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Reviewed By

Review Dalgo, Judy (2013) Review of "On the Field of Mercy: Women Medical Volunteers from the Civil War to the First World War". Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences (pp. 312-313). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001252800/

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Authors & Contributors
Hilde, Libra Rose
Hallett, Christine E.
Coddington, Ronald S.
Kang, Jong Hyuk David
Wooley, Charles F.
Wolmar, Christian
Concepts
Nurses and nursing
Medicine and the military; medicine in war
Women in medicine
Medicine
World War I
Physicians; doctors
Time Periods
19th century
20th century, early
20th century
Places
United States
Europe
Hong Kong
Southern states (U.S.)
Great Britain
Institutions
American Red Cross
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