Hospital Sketches Alcott

The chapter ‘A Night’, in Louisa May Alcott’s Hospital Sketches, is the most inspired chapter in the book. It tells the story of a fatally wounded Virginia blacksmith John, and it fell to Alcott to tell the dying man of his imminent fate and to pen John’s final letter home to his family as he dictated it. The man died while squeezing Alcott’s hand. She described that none of the deaths that she summoned in her life would make her heart ache as it did with John the blacksmith.

Louisa argued that Civil War army nursing was particularly difficult because of the advanced technology of warfare which had created many weapons which were powerful and efficient – butmedical science and technology had not advanced accordingly. In the absence of treatments, wounded limbs were amputated, frequently without the benefit of chloroform, using nothing more than a strong shot of whiskey. These treatments were excruciating, and often introduced new infections which were more dangerous than the wounds themselves.

In the chapter ‘A Day’, Alcott provides some clear examples of both the conditions of injured soldiersand the difficult tasks that nurses encountered during the Civil War. For example, she wrote “In they came, some on stretchers, some in men’s arms, some feebly staggering along propped on rude crutches, and one lay stark and still with covered face, as a comrade gave his name to be recorded before they carried him away to the dead house.” (Page 71) Compared with today, soldiers during the Civil War era did not have much access to medicine or medical equipment to help ease their wounds and pain.

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Many of them died instantly without being sent to the hospital, while those who survived often lived their lives in great pain and suffering from their injuries. Alcott attempted to inject humanity into the horrific situation that she witnessed in the hospital soat times, she infuses her writing with humor. However, it’s evident that she was …