In 1863, US Surgeon General William Hammond published a Treatise on Hygiene, perhaps the most influential medical text of the Civil War. Noting that a soldier’s age had a great deal to do with his health and fitness to serve, Hammond bluntly declared that “Boys do not make good soldiers.” The minimum enlistment age of… Read more →
Tag: soldiers
Beyond Women and War: The Lens of Feminist Military History
My first understandings of feminist military history developed when I was an officer in the US Air Force in the 1990s. I had long been interested in “women and war” as a compelling topic. I even taught a course on the subject in the 1990s as a faculty member at the US Air Force Academy…. Read more →
The Guerrilla Household of Lizzie and William Gregg
Taking a feminist lens to the Civil War in Missouri–known for its models of hypermasculinity like William Quantrill, “Bloody Bill” Anderson, Frank and Jesse James, Cole Younger, and William H. Gregg–it becomes readily apparent that white women were as married to the war as their Confederate menfolk. Lizzie Hook, a young woman from a slaveholding… Read more →
Women in the French Resistance
In France, women have long played a vital role in the military. Like most modern militaries, in multiple conflicts the French army had “camp followers,” mostly women, but also men and children, who took care of the cooking, laundering, and other tasks needed to maintain a large standing army. During the French Revolution, some women… Read more →
Understanding Trauma in the Civil War South: A Conversation with Diane Miller Sommerville
As I’ve written about for Nursing Clio previously, there’s been much debate in recent years about so-called ‘dark’ Civil War history. In that debate, Diane Miller Sommerville has been a vocal advocate for increased attention to the physical and psychological trauma wrought by the war. Her new book, An Aberration of Mind: Suicide and Suffering… Read more →
Colorizing and Fictionalizing the Past: A Review of Peter Jackson’s They Shall Not Grow Old
Five years ago, the Imperial War Museum in London contacted Peter Jackson (of Lord of the Rings fame) and tasked him with presenting some 100+ hours of archival footage from the First World War in a “fresh and original” way, without any new or modern footage. For over half a decade, Jackson and his team… Read more →
Bearing the Brunt of Their Father’s Service: Ex-Soldiers and Child Murder, 1914-1935
In May 2011, British Lance Corporal Liam Culverhouse assaulted his seven-week-old daughter, resulting in severe brain damage and fractures to her skull, limbs, and ribs.1 She never recovered and died 18 months later. Two years before the crime, Culverhouse had been medically discharged from the army with a diagnosis of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder after he… Read more →
Neuro-Psychiatry and Patient Protest in First World War American Hospitals
November 11 marks the 100th anniversary of the end of the First World War. As historian and Nursing Clio writer Evan Sullivan tweeted earlier this week, “We’ve always benefitted from the proximity of living within a century’s distance from WWI, but after this Sunday, it will begin to drift further into history. It will be… Read more →
Creating Battle Signs: Iraq/Afghanistan War Veterans, Art Therapy, and Rehabilitation
During my first research trip to the National Archives in College Park I stayed with my family in Lorton, Virginia just outside Washington, D.C. Every morning I drove past Fort Belvoir, a large and seemingly endless military base with its own school system and stores, and wondered what the inner workings were like. All I… Read more →