Books with title HOSPITAL SKETCHES.

Classics for Your Collection:goo.gl/U80LCr---------Hospital Sketches is a compilation of four sketches based on letters Louisa May Alcott sent home during the six weeks she spent as a volunteer nurse for the Union Army during the American Civil War in Georgetown.Tribulaton Periwinkle opens the story by complaining, "I want something to do." She dismisses suggestions to write a book, teach, get married, or start acting. When her younger brother suggests she "go nurse the soldiers", she immediately responds, "I will!" After substantial hardship in trying to obtain a spot, she has further difficulty finding a place on the train. She then describes her travel through New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore en route to Washington D. C.Immediately after her arrival, Periwinkle must attend to the wounded from the Battle of Fredericksburg. Her first assignment is washing them before putting them to bed. She converses with the various wounded soldiers, including an Irishman and a Virginia blacksmith. The blacksmith's death in particular touches her deeply.While serving as a nurse, Alcott wrote several letters to her family in Concord. At the urging of others, she prepared them for publication, slightly altering and fictionalizing them. The narrator of the stories was renamed Tribulation Periwinkle but the sketches are virtually authentic to Alcott's real experiences.Louisa May Alcott's father Amos Bronson Alcott predicted the sketches "likely to be popular, the subject and style of treatment alike commending it to the reader, and to the Army especially. I see nothing in the way of a good appreciation of Louisa's merits as a woman and a writer. Nothing could be more surprising to her or agreeable to us." Her father was right; when it proved popular, Alcott was surprised by her own success. As she wrote: "I cannot see why people like a few extracts from topsey turvey letters written on inverted tea kettles, waiting for gruel to warm, or poultices to cool, [or] for boys to wake and be tormented." Henry James, Sr. wrote her a letter to applaud "her charming pictures of hospital service."The Boston Evening Transcript called the book "fluent and sparkling, with touches of quiet humor and lively wit". Alcott herself wrote, "I find I've done a good thing without knowing it."Scroll Up and Get Your Copy!

Before her wider fame as the author of Little Women, Louisa May Alcott achieved recognition for her accounts of her work as a volunteer nurse in an army hospital. Written during the winter of 1862-63, her lively dispatches appeared in the newspaper Commonwealth, where they were eagerly read by soldiers’ friends and families. Then, as now, these chronicles revealed the desperate realities of battlefield medicine as well as the tentative first steps of women in military service. Writing under a pseudonym, Alcott recounted the vicissitudes of her two-day journey from her home in Concord, Massachusetts, to Washington, D.C. A fiery baptism in the practice of nursing awaited her at Washington Hospital, were she arrived immediately after the slaughter of the Army of the Potomac at the battle of Fredericksburg. Alcott’s rapidly paced prose graphically depicts the facts of hospital life, deftly balancing pathos with gentle humor. A vivid and truthful portrait of an often overlooked aspect of the Civil War, this book remains among the most illuminating reports of the era’s medical practices as well as a moving testimonial to the war’s human cost.

Alcott in 1862 served as a nurse in Georgetown, D.C during the Civil War. She wrote home what she observed there. Those harrowing and sometimes humorous letters compiled make up Hospital Sketches.First Page:HOSPITAL SKETCHESByLOUISA MAY ALCOTTTHESE SKETCHES ARE RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED TO HER FRIEND MISS HANNAH STEVENSON BY L.M.A.CONTENTSI. Obtaining Supplies II. A Forward Movement III. A Day IV. A Night V. Off Duty VI. A PostscriptCHAPTER IOBTAINING SUPPLIES."I want something to do."This remark being addressed to the world in general, no one in particular felt it their duty to reply; so I repeated it to the smaller world about me, received the following suggestions, and settled the matter by answering my own inquiry, as people are apt to do when very much in earnest."Write a book," quoth the author of my being."Don't know enough, sir. First live, then write.""Try teaching again," suggested my mother."No thank you, ma'am, ten years of that is enough.""Take a husband like my Darby, and fulfill your mission," said sister Joan, home on a visit."Can't afford expensive luxuries, Mrs. Coobiddy.""Turn actress, and immortalize your name," said sister Vashti, striking an attitude."I won't.""Go nurse the soldiers," said my young brother, Tom, panting for "the tented field...

Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888) was the daughter of famous transcendentalist, Bronson Alcott, but achieved notoriety herself as a writer of novels, letters and short stories. Growing up under the influence of such minds as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, Alcott took an early interest in writing, completing her first book in 1849. When she turned thirty, the Civil War was in full swing, and she left for Georgetown to serve as a nurse at the Union Hospital. Within six weeks Alcott contracted typhoid fever, the effects from which she would never fully recover. She spent her recovery time collecting, editing and fictionalizing the letters she had written to her family which described her experiences as a war nurse. These "Hospital Sketches", which brought Alcott instant popularity, relate the appalling conditions of the hospitals in graphic detail as well as her conversations with various injured soldiers.

Tribulation Periwinkle, looking for something to do, follow the suggestion of her brother, Tom, and decided to become a nurse for the Union Army. However, her difficulties begin before she even gets to the hospital. She describes the inconveniences of travel on her way to Washington, D.C. Once Nurse Periwinkle arrives at the Hurly-Burly Hotel, a temporary hospital, she has to learn how to nurse. As a modest Boston lady, she is embarrassed at her first assignment of cleaning the men. However, she soon becaomes used to such duties and it promoted to head nurse of the night shift. She describes the men, the processes of nursing, and the occurances at the hospital with great detail, humor, and tenderness. Nurse Periwinkle is forced to leave when she becomes ill and her father comes to bring her home. In the last chapter, she answers questions people had about nursing during the Civil War.

Before her wider fame as the author of Little Women, Louisa May Alcott achieved recognition for her accounts of her work as a volunteer nurse in an army hospital. Written during the winter of 1862-63, her lively dispatches appeared in the newspaper Commonwealth, where they were eagerly read by soldiers’ friends and families. Then, as now, these chronicles revealed the desperate realities of battlefield medicine as well as the tentative first steps of women in military service. Writing under a pseudonym, Alcott recounted the vicissitudes of her two-day journey from her home in Concord, Massachusetts, to Washington, D.C. A fiery baptism in the practice of nursing awaited her at Washington Hospital, were she arrived immediately after the slaughter of the Army of the Potomac at the battle of Fredericksburg. Alcott’s rapidly paced prose graphically depicts the facts of hospital life, deftly balancing pathos with gentle humor. A vivid and truthful portrait of an often overlooked aspect of the Civil War, this book remains among the most illuminating reports of the era’s medical practices as well as a moving testimonial to the war’s human cost.

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