Washington City Citadel: A Civil War Romance

Memories of my grandfather, Frederick John Burns (1875–1956), a homeopathic doctor who graduated from Rush Medical School in Chicago, and his daughter who was my mother, Lois Burns Stoddard (1916–2003), a graduate of the Henry Ford Nurses Training School in Detroit, stirred my interest in the history of medicine. I have read books on the subject for years and was impressed by my visit to the Civil War Museum of Medicine in Hagerstown, Maryland.

In June 2015, I began volunteering as a guide a...