The Inhospitable Hospital: Gender and Professionalism in Civil War Medicine

^A M E R I CA N W O M E N were enthusiastic in their support of medical efforts during the Civil War. They used their homes, schools, and churches as manufactories for medical and sanitary supplies distributed by benevolent organizations. Although the majority of women stayed at home to farm or look after business interests, a sizable number went to work outside of the home in order to support families left indigent by the absence of male breadwinners who had become soldiers.1 Of those who left home to earn a living, over twenty thousand sought work in the military hospitals of the Confederacy and the Union.2 They were women of the Eastern Seaboard, the Deep South, and the Middle West. They were adolescent slaves, Catholic