A history obscured by titles

Unidentified Civil War male nurse at Mt. Pleasant Hospital, Washington, D.C., in uniform

Men were not absent from nursing’s history. They worked in military and psychiatric hospitals, men’s wards, hospital schools of nursing for men, anesthesia departments, and nursing practice committees. However, records confined them to being known by other titles, including attendants, orderlies, hospital stewards, corpsmen, soldiers, anesthetists, and brothers. These labels mattered; they determined who was considered a nurse, allowed into professional nursing associations, and included in nursing histories.

Military hospitals and bedside work

One of the most impressive examples of this trend is military medicine, with the lines between nursing and transport, sanitation and medical care often blurred. Men carried water, changed bedding, moved the wounded, washed the soiled body, took the temperature, distributed food, helped to dress wounds, attended wounded men in their delirium, and sat with them while they died. For the U.S. Civil War, the majority of those contracted to provide nursing services for Union forces were males. Since many were soldiers, hospital stewards, or civilian helpers, the work was often remembered as military labor rather than nursing labor.

Civil War hospitals in Washington, DC, such as Armory Square Hospital, had wards filled with rows of […]