Hands of Mercy: The Story of Sister-Nurses in the Civil War

by Norah Smaridge

Overview

Six hundred nuns from twelve religious communities served as U.S. Army nurses during the Civil War. They served on the battlefield and gave their lives. A group of Sisters of Mercy traveling to St. Louis on a Union steamboat took fire from a Confederate gun battery and worked through it, tending the wounded. At Gettysburg one St. Joseph sister wiped the blood-covered face of a young soldier to discover that he was her 18 year-old brother.

When the Sisters of Providence took over the military hospital in Indianapolis during the Civil War, they found that “it was dirty beyond belief. A scouring brigade was formed, and the nuns went down on their knees, scrubbing every inch of the stained and dirty floors. They washed walls and windows, threw out dirty mattresses, and soon had the wards clean and sweet-smelling. Next they set up kitchens, special diet kitchens, and a laundry.”

Soldiers, doctors, military officials, civilians—all learned to respect and admire the Sisters, who came to be known as the Sisters of Charity.

In the years following the Civil War, nuns established 800 hospitals, the basis for a network of Catholic hospitals that now serves one in six patients, the largest private group in the U.S.

This wonderful book by Norah Smaridge provides a glorious in-depth portrait of the many Sister-Nurses during the Civil War years.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781789124002
Publisher:	Papamoa Press
Publication date:	12/01/2018
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	85
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

NORAH SMARIDGE (1903-1994) was an English-born American author of great versatility, having written numerous children’s books, as well as adult novels, serials, poems, book notes, television scripts, how-to articles and translations. She also worked for the Catholic Weekly as the monthly columnist of “Book Nook.” Born on March 30, 1903 in Liverpool, England, she graduated with honors from the University of London in 1924 and continued to take classes at Columbia University and Hunter College in New York. From 1925-1935 she taught at New York’s Marymount High School and Junior College. In 1937 she joined St. Anthony Press Guild in New Jersey as an advertising writer. She had written quantities of verse and stories for British magazines and continued to send her articles abroad from the U.S., whilst also working in a bookshop, for a literary agency, and as a copywriter. Her first novel, Atlantic Deception, was published in England in 1938. With the onset of WWII, and communications becoming difficult and uncertain, she turned to American markets. Her next book, a juvenile title, Ludi: The Little St. Bernard, was published in the U.S. in 1956, and Nando of the Beach (1958) and Sunday Best (1959) soon followed, sparking a literary career that would span the next two decades. She passed away on August 11, 1994, aged 91.

ALBERT MICALE (1913-1993) was an illustrator of comic books, magazines, juvenile books and magazine covers. He attended Pratt Institute and began his career illustrating for Street and Smith, Popular Pulps and juvenile books. He was a contributor to Dell Publishing, as a longtime illustrator of their Roy Rogers comic book (1940s-1950s), also producing advertising strips with the character and drawing Roy in the Whitman Better Little Book series. Until the early 1960s, he worked on other titles for the company, including Boots and Saddles and Wanted: Dead or Alive. Micale died in Scottsdale, Arizona in 1993.