Mary Livermore and My Story of the War: A nurse's narrative journey.

Mary Livermore's My Story of the War is a valuable piece of travel writing written from the point of view of a nurse who documented her unexpected personal and professional journey to administer the Sanitary Commission of the United States Union Army and provide nursing care during the American Civil War. Although Livermore's pre-war background had not been solely limited to the domestic sphere, her wartime experience involved a public negotiation between the traditional domestic realm assigned to women and new nursing professional functions that emerged during the war. In a context in which the general access of women to public writing was rather limited and in which nursing was not a formally regulated professional activity, Livermore's triumphal narrative reflects the increasing connection between progressively professional nursing functions that emerged in the context of war and a new women's rights leadership forged during her autobiographical journey.

Triumphal narratives in the American Civil War: A new nursing professional identity.

AIMS: To analyse the evolving social role of female nurses in the American Civil War context in terms of gender, class and race and to examine whether their caring efforts correspond to the beginnings of a new nursing professional identity. DESIGN: Historical research. METHODS: Thirteen American Civil War nurses' triumphal narratives written between 1865-1902 were analysed. The search and work were carried out between 2012-2020. Women's history and thematic analysis provided, respectively, the theoretical and analytical frameworks. RESULTS: The arrival of the war was the catalyst for change. The nurses' autobiographies were written in a hostile environment where class and racial tensions had to be released. This analysis points to nursing care being transformed from its traditional domestic traits to a progressive and intentional professional dimension. CONCLUSION: American Civil War nurses' autobiographies offer an innovative vision of their lives and their nursing work. Specifically, the autobiographical accounts provide new perspectives on the evolution of the authors' social dimension in terms of class, race and gender as well as the development of a new nursing professional identity in that context. Impact Illuminating overlooked meanings hidden in nurses' autobiographies improves women's visibility and their contribution to the history of nursing.

Re-assembly of nineteenth-century smallpox vaccine genomes reveals the contemporaneous use of horsepox and horsepox-related viruses in the USA.

According to a recent article published in Genome Biology, Duggan and coworkers sequenced and partially assembled five genomes of smallpox vaccines from the nineteenth century. No information regarding the ends of genomes was presented, and they are important to understand the evolutionary relationship of the different smallpox vaccine genomes during the centuries. We re-assembled the genomes, which include the largest genomes in the vaccinia lineage and one true horsepox strain. Moreover, the assemblies reveal a diverse genetic structure in the genome ends. Our data emphasize the concurrent use of horsepox and horsepox-related viruses as the smallpox vaccine in the nineteenth century.

Response to Brinkmann et al. "Re-assembly of 19th century smallpox vaccine genomes reveals the contemporaneous use of horsepox and horsepox-related viruses in the United States".

We thank Brinkmann and colleagues for their correspondence and their further investigation into these American Civil War Era vaccination strains. Here, we summarize the difficulties and caveats of work with ancient DNA.

American Civil War medical practice, the post-bellum opium crisis and modern comparisons.

The American Civil War resulted in massive numbers of injured and ill soldiers. Throughout the conflict, medical doctors relied on opium to treat these conditions, giving rise to claims that the injudicious use of the narcotic caused America's post-bellum opium crisis. Similar claims of medical misuse of opioids are now made as America confronts the modern narcotic crisis. A more nuanced thesis based on a broader base of Civil War era research suggests a more complex set of interacting factors that collectively contributed to America's post-war opium crisis.

Collecting a Dental Payment during the Civil War - a Case of Persistence.

The livelihood of the practicing dentist depends upon timely payment for the dental services provided. Receiving payment has never been an entirely predictable occurrence. There are countless reasons that commonly delay the collection of a dental debt and sometimes the debtor is forgiven when the amount of debt is outweighed by the perceived difficulty of collecting it. This narrative tells the story of a perseverant dentist, Dr. Lloyd Macgill and his successful pursuit of a debt while the Civil War raged on, at times not far from his office, and long after the death of the patient who owed him for services rendered.

The origins and genomic diversity of American Civil War Era smallpox vaccine strains.

Vaccination has transformed public health, most notably including the eradication of smallpox. Despite its profound historical importance, little is known of the origins and diversity of the viruses used in smallpox vaccination. Prior to the twentieth century, the method, source and origin of smallpox vaccinations remained unstandardised and opaque. We reconstruct and analyse viral vaccine genomes associated with smallpox vaccination from historical artefacts. Significantly, we recover viral molecules through non-destructive sampling of historical materials lacking signs of biological residues. We use the authenticated ancient genomes to reveal the evolutionary relationships of smallpox vaccination viruses within the poxviruses as a whole.

Confederates in the Attic: Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, Cardiovascular Disease, and the Return of Soldier's Heart.

Da Costa originally described Soldier's Heart in the 19th Century as a syndrome that occurred on the battlefield in soldiers of the American Civil War. Soldier's Heart involved symptoms similar to modern day posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as well as exaggerated cardiovascular reactivity felt to be related to an abnormality of the heart. Interventions were appropriately focused on the cardiovascular system. With the advent of modern psychoanalysis, psychiatric symptoms became divorced from the body and were relegated to the unconscious. Later, the physiology of PTSD and other psychiatric disorders was conceived as solely residing in the brain. More recently, advances in psychosomatic medicine led to the recognition of mind-body relationships and the involvement of multiple physiological systems in the etiology of disorders, including stress, depression PTSD, and cardiovascular disease, has moved to the fore, and has renewed interest in the validity of the original model of the Soldier's Heart syndrome.

Wartime health shocks and the postwar socioeconomic status and mortality of union army veterans and their children.

We investigate when and how health shocks reverberate across the life cycle and down to descendants in a manual labor economy by examining the association of war wounds with the socioeconomic status and older age mortality of US Civil War (1861-5) veterans and of their adult children. Younger veterans who had been severely wounded in the war left the farm sector, becoming laborers. Consistent with human capital and job matching models, older severely wounded men were unlikely to switch sectors and their wealth declined by 37-46%. War wounds were correlated with children's socioeconomic and mortality outcomes in ways dependent on sex and paternal age group.

"Harmonies of Form and Color": Race and the Prosthetic Body in Civil War America.

This article considers the cultural meanings of Civil War injury, particularly amputation, with regard to race. Putting elements of print and visual culture in conversation with the material history of prostheses, the article explores competing understandings of war-acquired disability as a unifying category that could cross the color line or, alternatively, as a site of (white) racial distinction. While a number of depictions of "Empty Sleeves" in the Northern press in the early years following the war depicted black veterans' battle injuries as proof of their fitness for citizenship, representations of prosthetic limbs tended to tie rehabilitation to whiteness and to exclude blackness from the imagined national future. Exploring representations of Civil War injury and prosthetic reconstruction thus nuances accounts of the intersection of disability and race in the nineteenth century, revealing a form of disability inclusion that produced new elements of subjection and exclusion.

Epidemiological Isolation as an Infection Mortality Risk Factor in U.S. Soldiers from Late Nineteenth to Early Twentieth Centuries.

It remains uncertain why most infectious disease mortalities disappeared before modern medical interventions. Historical epidemiology using prospectively collected U.S. Army data from the Civil War (1860-1861), Spanish-American War (1898-1899), and First World War (1917-1918) suggests that epidemiological isolation was a major mortality risk factor for soldiers. Morbidity and mortality due to common infections decreased progressively from 1860 to 1918, except for influenza during the 1918 pandemic. Adult measles or mumps infections are indicative of isolated rural populations and correlated with disease mortality by U.S. state. Experiencing infections before adulthood may equip the immune system to better resist infections and decrease mortality rates.

American Civil War plant medicines inhibit growth, biofilm formation, and quorum sensing by multidrug-resistant bacteria.

A shortage of conventional medicine during the American Civil War (1861-1865) spurred Confederate physicians to use preparations of native plants as medicines. In 1863, botanist Francis Porcher compiled a book of medicinal plants native to the southern United States, including plants used in Native American traditional medicine. In this study, we consulted Porcher's book and collected samples from three species that were indicated for the formulation of antiseptics: Liriodendron tulipifera, Aralia spinosa, and Quercus alba. Extracts of these species were tested for the ability to inhibit growth in three species of multidrug-resistant pathogenic bacteria associated with wound infections: Staphylococcus aureus, Klebsiella pneumoniae, and Acinetobacter baumannii. Extracts were also tested for biofilm and quorum sensing inhibition against S. aureus. Q. alba extracts inhibited growth in all three species of bacteria (IC50 64, 32, and 32 µg/mL, respectively), and inhibited biofilm formation (IC50 1 µg/mL) in S. aureus. L. tulipifera extracts inhibited biofilm formation (IC50 32 µg/mL) in S. aureus. A. spinosa extracts inhibited biofilm formation (IC50 2 µg/mL) and quorum sensing (IC50 8 µg/mL) in S. aureus. These results support that this selection of plants exhibited some antiseptic properties in the prevention and management of wound infections during the conflict.

Mary Edwards Walker (1832-1919): Approach to limb salvage therapy.

Mary Edwards Walker (1832-1919) was the first female surgeon in the United States. Her upbringing and unique medical training led her to practice medicine in a way that was revolutionary for the time. During the Civil War, her approach to wound care rivaled the current standard of care. During an era that predated antiseptic surgical technique, she prioritized cleanliness and hygiene. She opposed amputation for its surgical risks and decreased postoperative quality of life. She believed that many wounds, when appropriately attended to, would heal without amputation. She advocated for patients who she believed did not require amputations and counseled them on their rights to refuse surgical care.