In the world of medicine, doctors get most of the credit for their work in healing the sick. But the truth is, they rely on many people to heal and keep their patients healthy. Some of the professionals that doctors rely on most are volunteer and registered nurses.
Doctors may work standard hours in private practices these days, but many times nurses are the ones who put in the long hours, kept watch over the sick and injured, and fend off infections. It's a tough job for tough people. Let's look at a few of the most famous:
Florence Nightingale
Of all nurses throughout history, no one has earned more fame than Florence Nightingale. She attended a prestigious medical school for her nursing training at the young age of 17 and spent her entire life making medicine safer for everyone.
Nightingale was always prone to working rather than socializing. She enjoyed the company of female medical professionals over the courtship of men. When she completed her nursing degree, she was soon made the head superintendent at a London hospital for invalid women.
Her service during the Crimean War led her to advocate for better hospital conditions because soldiers were dying or becoming infected very rapidly due to putrid conditions on the battlefield and in the hospitals. Nightingale resisted the opposition to changing the disastrous military standards of care and forged ahead to improve the sanitation of the hospital wards. After seeing the horrid conditions for the soldiers, she pressed for increased training of nurses and health care professionals. These actions eventually led to the formation of the Army Medical College.
“Let whoever is in charge keep this simple question in her head – how can I provide for the right thing to be always done?”
– Florence Nightingale
Walt Whitman
Whitman is, perhaps, one of the most well-known American poets of all time, but he is less known for his volunteer service as a nurse in an army hospital during the Civil War. Though not a career nurse, his writings provided much food for thought to other medical professionals about how to improve treatment and conditions. He wrote extensively about it in his serialized column “The Great Army of the Sick,” which was published in a New York newspaper in 1863 and, 12 years later, for a book called Memoranda During the War.
Helen Fairchild
As a nurse in the first World War, Fairchild was determined to make a difference to the injured. She entered the World War I theater in 1917, but unfortunately her story does not end as well as many heroes.
From her letters, we learn that Fairchild was expected to cover an area comprised of more than 2,000 beds that inhabited the small area, and would stand in mud, blood and filth in order to treat patients. Fourteen-hour days were not uncommon for her and her crew of tireless nurses.
Because she literally practiced medicine on the battlefield, the cause of Fairchild’s death is undetermined. It would seem that it may have been caused by either the chloroform that was used in the operation rooms, a sudden serious infection or a gas bomb.
Clara Barton
Born in 1821, Barton was the “Angel of the Battlefield” during the Civil War in the United States. Though she used to be a clerk in the U.S. Patent Office, Barton organized a supply line for the soldiers on the battlefield. She would also head to the battles herself, tending to wounded and dying soldiers. Eventually her brave and selfless actions gained the attention of President Abraham Lincoln, who bestowed her with civilian honors and new duties as an advocate for missing soldiers.
In 1870, Barton helped the International Red Cross during the Franco-Prussian War, eventually leading to the formation of the American Red Cross in the United States.
Mary Eliza Mahoney
Mary Eliza Mahoney graduated from nursing school in 1879 as the first certified African-American nurse. As a young woman, she declined work in domestic service and instead opted for the New England Hospital for Women and Children to gain many years of practical nursing experience before entering a health care school.
Mahoney graduated nursing school at the age of 34, paving the way for other African-American nurses in the future. Through her hard work she would provide the inspiration for the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses, which she helped co-found in 1908. Later in life Mahoney used her past experience to not only assist black women, but all women in having educational and professional rights, further helping the status of professional nurses to this day.
Mary Todd Lincoln
Mary is well-known to historians through her life as the wife of President Abraham Lincoln. She was a controversial figure who battled health care issues of her own, mostly consisting of deep depression and anxiety attacks.
Coming from a rather well-off family, Mary Todd Lincoln never needed much in terms of careers and settled in her role of mother and housewife very nicely, and soon found herself as the First Lady of the United States. But her good fortune was not to last, and Mary and Abraham would lose one of their young sons during their stay in the White House. Tragedy would again strike the family in the famous assassination incident of 1865.
What is often overlooked about the unique life of Mary Todd Lincoln was her unusual preference to give personal contributions to the Civil War effort as a volunteer nurse to many soldiers in Union hospitals (nearly unheard of for ladies of stature), often working long, difficult hours in unhealthy conditions. Mrs. Lincoln gave tirelessly and later went on to work with networks that provided medical and material help to freed slaves to integrate them into Northern society.
