TERRENOS NECESARIOS PARA EJECUTAR LAS OBRAS

The provision of drugs and pharmaceutical care in the South was quite different from the North. For one thing, nothing resembled the U.S. Sanitary Commission through which Southern women could channel their energies for the benefit of the whole Confederacy.

There was a Women’s Relief Society of the Confederate States headed by a Nashville organizer, Mrs. Felicia Grundy Porter, but its work never approached the comprehensiveness suggested by its am- bitious-sounding title.55_{Yet women were involved in aiding their war}

for independence in other ways. Throughout the South various La- dies Auxiliary Christian Associations and Soldiers’ Relief Associa- tions were established. In Fairfield, South Carolina, the Ladies’ Re- lief Association collected numerous medicinal agents: turpentine, slippery elm, patent medicine, chloroform, ginger root, arrowroot, wine, and gum camphor.56

The rosters of hospital attendants and nurses are full of notable Southern women. Fannie Beers first provided nursing care in Georgia hospitals and then took to the field when Union troops occupied the area; Susan Leigh Blackford worked in the famous Chimborazo Hos- pital in Richmond; Almira Fales stored medical supplies, and upon South Carolina’s secession distributed over $150,000 worth of goods; Ella King Newsom Trader cared for the sick and wounded at several points in the western theater, and after the Battle of Shiloh her ser- vices were sought by several Confederate surgeons; pistol-packing Phoebe Pember was Chimborazo Hospital’s administrator, the first woman to hold such a position; and Sally Tompkins headed Robert- son Hospital, also in Richmond.57

Much of the medical care provided to confederate soldiers took place in makeshift hospitals that the women themselves established and staffed under the aegis of their own local aid societies. This work sometimes involved directing and managing soldiers who had been de- tailed to assist in the wards (and who likely were nonplussed as to the exact requirements of their positions). Ellen P. Bryce reminisced to a doctor in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, of her work:

In the spring of 1864 an Ala. Regiment was encamped here. I recollect we had the 41st_{Ala. Reg.—much sickness among the}

soldiers, measles got in amongst those country fellows, then camp fever. We ladies then had a Society of which Mrs. Isabel Pratt, Dr. Pratt’s Mother (he was Prof. at the University of Ala)—Mrs. Isabel Pratt was President of the Soldiers Aid Soci- ety. Mrs. Lizzie Lee . . . was Secretary. I was Treasurer. We got the Trustees of the Ala. Ins. Hosp. to lend us one wing of the building for our Hospital, and we had a kitchen in the center

building where we had our food for the sick soldiers to be cooked . . .

It is a pity we have no record of our Hospital. We got our sup- plies from the Headquarters where the officers and Generals and soldiers stayed. . . . I became a Nurse to a Ward. I was 22 years old. I had 18 men in my Ward. I lost 5 by death—that that awful camp fever took them off. I shall never forget my experience— our nurses to do the necessary work, were soldiers detailed from Camp, we had two in each Ward, beside the lady nurse & the Surgeon & Matron.58

Perhaps the most famous woman nurse of the South was Kate Cumming (1828-1909) (Figure 3.4). Although few Southern women wrote detailed accounts of their relief work during the war, Cumming’s extensive narrative provides an intimate glimpse into the duties they

FIGURE 3.4. Kate Cumming was born in Scotland but moved at an early age to Mobile, Alabama. Although few Southern women wrote accounts of their war- time service, Kate Cumming’sJournal of Hospital Life in the Confederate Army of Tennessee (1866) is a notable exception. Cumming served in hospitals in Mis-

sissippi, Tennessee, and Georgia. Image courtesy of the National Library of Medicine, History of Medicine Division.

commonly performed.59_{In it she describes making therapeutic bev-}

erages like hot toddies (sweetened spirituous drinks normally fla- vored with nutmeg) and administering them to the men. While male hospital stewards and volunteer pharmacists typically performed compounding and dispensing functions, Cumming’s familiarity with the culinary arts, something taught to every girl of her generation at an early age, served her well in compounding preparations. One in- teresting example was her experience with administering arrowroot. Arrowroot, a plant native to the West Indies, was a substance listed in the USD and was widely considered a nutritious, easily digested flour especially suited for the sick and particularly useful in febrile condi- tions affecting the stomach and bowels.60_{Its value was unquestioned;}

getting it down the men was another matter. Cumming wrote: We have a quantity of arrow-root, and I was told it was useless to prepare it, as the men would not touch it. I thought that I would try them, and now I use gallons of it daily. I make it quite thin and sometimes beat up a few eggs and stir in while hot; then sea- son with preserves of any kind—those that are a little acid are the best—and let it stand until it becomes cold. This makes a very pleasant and nourishing drink; it is good in quite a number of diseases; will ease a cough; and is especially beneficial in cases of pneumonia. With good wine, instead of the preserves, it is also excellent; I have not had one man to refuse it, but I do not tell them of what it is made.61

It is likely that nearly every experienced female nurse working in the Southern hospitals had her favorite remedy.62 _{Mrs. A. F. Hopkins,}

who had charge of caring for the Alabama regiments in Richmond, prepared a “convalescent bitters” from slippery elm, quassia, gentian, columbo root, sugar, and “good” whisky.63

These women sometimes did more than compound and dispense medicines; they often ordered large stocks to maintain their hospital stores. This function was deemed so important that Sally Tompkins became the first woman to ever officially serve in an American army when she obtained a captain’s commission from President Jefferson Davis so that she might more easily order supplies for Robertson Hospital from the medical purveyor.64_{Mrs. Hopkins also was not shy}

in requesting drug supplies. She requisitioned large amounts of Ja- maica ginger, ginger, fluidextract of uva ursi, laudanum, sweet nitre,

blue mass (mercury), rhubarb, cloves, allspice, and green tea for her Alabama patients.65

As the war progressed the South increasingly felt the effects of wartime shortages brought on by the Union naval blockade. As the grip tightened and port after port closed, Confederate access to for- eign resources markedly diminished and drug supplies naturally suf- fered. One of the most acute shortages was in the supply of opium, which normally was imported from Far Eastern and Turkish sources. In response, Surgeon General Samuel Preston Moore issued a circu- lar on March 19, 1863, asking “the ladies of the South to interest themselves in the culture of the garden poppy [Papaver somniferum, from which opium is obtained].”66_{Medical purveyors were instructed}

to provide poppy seeds to any lady on demand, orders that were ap- parently filled as requests began to flow into the purveyors’ depots.67

Surgeon General Moore tried to meet the expected shortages by encouraging reliance on medicinal plants native to the southeastern states. He formalized this plan with the commissioning of Francis Peyre Porcher’s Resources of the Southern Fields and Forests (1863), about which more will be said later. Yet even before this, just one year into the war, orders were received in the medical purveyor’s office in Richmond enlisting civilians (this would imply women mostly, since most of the men had gone off to war) in the foraging and cultivation of medicinal plants. Each purveyor was instructed to employ

from one to three trustworthy agents to go through the country in their districts, to collect and encourage the Country people to cultivate, collect, and prepare the indigenous plants needed. A special list of such indigenous plants as may have been col- lected, will be forwarded monthly to this office in order that when necessary the plants may be sent to the Laboratory that preparations may be made from them.68

Of course this assumes a certain familiarity with medical botany among the general populace, an assumption not unfounded. It was in this manner, in fact, that a considerable amount of pharmaceutical care was delivered on a less formal, more time-honored basis. Do- mestic herbalists, many of them women, provided indigenous reme- dies. Dr. C. Kendrick, who lived in Mississippi during the war, re- called that these “sure enough doctors” took charge of treating the sick.69_{Following “the botanic practice,” they gave emetics such as}

lobelia and boneset; purgatives such as Culver’s root, mayapple, and white walnut bark; and prepared decoctions of willow, poplar, holly, sassafras, plum, locust, wild cherry, black haw, oak, snake root, and other local flora.70_{Similarly, Joseph Jacobs reported that a veritable}

apothecary was to be had in “every good housewife’s pantry” and how “the grandmothers of those days revived the traditions of Colo- nial times.”71 _{Moreover, these women knew from oral traditions}

handed down to them for generations when to gather the plants. They knew, for example,

that barks were best gathered while the sap was running, and when gathered the outer and rougher portion should be shaved off and the bark cut thinly and placed in a good position in the shade to dry; that roots ought to be gathered after the leaves are dead in the fall, or better, before the sap rises; that seeds and flowers must be gathered only when fully ripe, and put in a nice dry place, and that medicinal plants to be secured in the greatest perfection should be claimed when in bloom and carefully dried in the shade.72

So it may be said with some assurance that Southern women con- tributed to Civil War pharmacy but certainly in less formally struc- tured, though no less important ways, than their Northern counter- parts laboring through the commission. Nevertheless, there can also be no doubt that this lack of structure and organized effort had some effect on the ability of the Confederacy to supply medicines on a reg- ular basis. Without a formal Confederatewide association capable of directing activities, there was no way for civilian contributions and services to be systematically directed and rendered when and where needed. This was a principal strength of the Sanitary Commission, and it was something wholly lacking in the South. Shortages created by the blockade exacerbated the situation for the Confederacy. North- ern analysts noted this disparity and derided the “Southern ladies” who allowed their zeal to cool and “contented themselves with wav- ing their handkerchiefs to the soldiers, instead of providing for their wants.”73_{They concluded that “the gifts and sacrifices of Southern}

women to their army and hospitals, were not the hundredth, hardly the thousandth part of those of the women of the North to their coun- trymen.”74 _{Southerners noted this problem too. Kate Cumming be-}

plaining that “a lady’s respectability must be at low ebb when it can be endangered by going into a hospital.”75 _{But this lack of public}

work belies the contributions of Southern women who foraged in field and meadow for the most effective remedies they knew from their mothers, grandmothers, and great-grandmothers. Nor does it take into account the assistance women provided at the request of their surgeon general to gather and forward crude drug product on to the medical purveyors. It is unfortunate for the men of the South that this activity did not take place under the supervision of a Sanitary Com- mission–like body devoted to that purpose, but it does not mean it did not occur at all.

The reasons why there was no comparable Confederate relief or- ganization are rooted in demographics, social conventions, and polit- ical ideas peculiar to the South. To begin with, the South was an agrarian economy never much more than one step removed from a frontier setting.76 _{This kept families relatively isolated, a condition}

aggravated by a slave economy that tended to make plantations, both large and small, models of insular self-sufficiency. Such social condi- tions tended to reinforce the cult of domesticity to which women were born. Girls were commensurately raised to conform to these ex- pectations. When women did routinely gather—at church, at wed- dings, or the occasional visits of friends and relatives—this norma- tive culture was again solidified in discussions of child rearing, household duties, husbands, and (if allowed the luxury) fashion. The slave system was even held up as a positive benefit to Southern woman. “If then, slavery is morally corrupting,” asked the Reverend Robert L. Dabney of Virginia,

Southern ladies should show the result very plainly. But what says the fact? Its testimony is one which fills the heart of every Southern man with grateful pride; that the Southern lady is pro- verbially eminent for all that adorns female character, for grace, for purity and refinement, for benevolence, for generous charity, for dignified kindness and forbearance to inferiors, for chival- rous courage, and for devout piety.77

Of course, this idealized “Southern lady” never really existed in fact.78 _{More accurate was Dabney’s careful prefatory remarks re-}

minding his reader that all this elevated character was to be displayed wholly within the domestic sphere.79_{The woman’s place was in the}

home. In such an environment it was difficult, if not impossible, for women to network and organize on a broad scale; gathering in the cause of social activism was unthinkable.80_{The Southern political}

culture also implicitly argued against a large-scale organized women’s relief movement. For all of the fire-eaters’ saber rattling in the name of “The Cause,” the concept of nationalism was an inchoate ideal rather than a definite goal rooted in specific principles. Lacking dis- tinctions in language, religion, and history, Southern nationalism was built on the “shallow foundations” of geography and economics and became a chief reason for the failure of its bid for independence.81_In

the North the call to arms become one of defense of the Union and aroused a nationalism that had slumbered (waking only occasionally over xenophobic nightmares and jingoistic manifest destiny) since the ratification of the Constitution. In contrast, the South had no simi- lar rallying cry. “At least to the same degree to which specific states remained the focus of American loyalties after independence,” writes Liah Greenfeld, “the state, rather than the Confederacy, remained the focus of Southern loyalties.”82_{Thus, in the South a broad and com-}

prehensive effort at relief simply did not accord with the allegiances of its citizens. No wonder that the well-intended Mrs. Porter’s Dixie- wide Women’s Relief Society never really took shape.

The political climate in the North was quite different. Women had already begun to organize in the cause of abolitionism and their own rights. By 1861 a few militant women had already come together thir- teen years before at Seneca Falls, New York, to discuss and rectify their second-class status. Interestingly, this landmark convention was conceived when one of its organizers, Lucretia Mott (1793-1880), was denied a seat at an antislavery conference in London on the sole grounds of her gender. Teaming up with Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902), the meeting drew 240, forty of which were men, most notably the ex-slave and abolitionist Frederick Douglass.83_{As a result}

of these activities Northern women, even those not actively involved in the woman’s movement, were no strangers to the idea of organiz- ing toward some common altruistic end. Though America was still predominantly agrarian, the cities of the Northeast and Midwest were growing rapidly, more women lived in cosmopolitan areas, an envi- ronment that lent itself well to concerted, organized effort. In con- trast, the unmistakable association of the woman’s movement with abolitionism was sufficient to cause most Southern women (the

Grimké sisters being notable exceptions) to recoil at the very notion of venturing beyond hearth and home. Even after the war, the women of the so-called New South were, in historian George Rable’s words, “unaffected by a growing feminist activism elsewhere in the coun- try.”84_{Given these two very different social milieus, the more individ-}

ual and domestic contributions of women in the Confederacy are readily explained.

WOMEN AND CIVIL WAR PHARMACY: