TREASURES FROM OUR TRADITION
Last week’s Treasure mentioned the “Nuns of the Battlefield,” religious sisters from several communities who served as nurses in the Civil War. Florence Nightingale had only instituted female nurses a decade before in the Crimean War, so the idea of women tending to wounded soldiers was extraordinary. The medical and sanitary conditions on the battlefields were appalling, and the sisters were nearly all teachers. Few had any medical training beyond what they had learned as youngsters in the family. Anti-Catholic prejudice was so deeply entrenched in America that sisters could not wear their habits in public. These sisters were the first, and people on both the Union and Confederate sides soon began to marvel at their bravery, efficiency, and respect for Protestant soldiers. More than six hundred sisters from twenty-one communities went to war, serving in wretched conditions. They were tough and single minded, efficient and fearless. After the war, sisters could appear in public everywhere in the reunited nation, and often received the praise and gratitude of grateful soldiers and family members on behalf of their sister nurses. An outdoor monument to the “Nuns of the Battlefield” stands in Washington at M Street and Rhode Island Avenue. The inscription reads: “They comforted the dying, nursed the wounded, carried hope to the imprisoned, gave in His name a drink of water to the thirsty.”