Hospital Transports A Memoir of the Embarkation of the Sick and Wounded from the Peninsula of Virginia in the Summer of 1862
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Laura L. Behling - Edited and with an introduction by
Price: $30.00 Hardcover - 170 pages
Release Date: May 2005
ISBN10: 0-7914-6369-9 ISBN13: 978-0-7914-6369-7
Price: $26.95 Paperback - 170 pages
Release Date: June 2006
ISBN10: 0-7914-6370-2 ISBN13: 978-0-7914-6370-3
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Summary
Details the reactions of men and women serving aboard a hospital transport ship during the American Civil War.
The care of the sick, wounded, and dying during the American Civil War was a complex endeavor that brought ordinary men and women into contact with the terror of the battlefield. Hospital Transports is a compilation of letters and other papers written by physicians and nurses serving aboard the Union hospital steamboat Daniel Webster in the summer of 1862. The text details sleeping arrangements, cooking and feeding schedules, medical practices, and the incorporation of liberated slaves from the Lee plantation into the daily work of the ship. Clearly described are the emotional, visceral reactions of the corps of medical personnel who, as their ship makes its way along the Potomac picking up casualties, question the philosophies at the root of war, and the metaphysical questions concerning the definitions of life and death.
"Hospital Transports represents a microcosm of the Civil War. The first-hand perspectives, by both men and women, is an especially interesting and unique dimension of the text."— Bruce Mills, editor of Letters from New-York by Lydia Maria Child
"The collected letters in Hospital Transports offer historians a rich source for understanding how women and men responded to the gruesome battlefield scenes of the Civil War." — Judith Ann Giesberg, author of Civil War Sisterhood: The U.S. Sanitary Commission and Women's Politics in Transition
Laura L. Behling is Assistant Professor of English at Gustavus Adolphus College and the author of The Masculine Woman in America, 1890–1935.
