Balm of Hope: Charity Afire Impels Daughters of Charity to Civil War Nursing ed. by Betty Ann McNeil, D.C. (review)

Jane Austen once wrote, “… Real solemn history, I cannot be interested in. … The quarrels of popes and kings, with wars and pestilences in every page; the men all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all.” ¹Those as disinterested in military history as Austen was or bewildered in the search for historical accounts of war that focus on women and the good that can come from such acts of violence will welcome this book. Balm of Hope: Charity Afire Impels Daughters of Charity to Civil War Nursingis a compilation of military hospital notes, “recollections and accounts,” and correspondence that detail the service of the American Daughters of Charity of Vincent de Paul, women whose lives were dedicated to charity and who achieved the trusted sociocultural position of being able to provide spiritual and physical comfort and care for Union and Confederate soldiers alike. It is edited by Sister Betty Ann McNeil, archivist of the order, who also assisted this reviewer with a book about the nurses among the confraternity of the Daughters of Charity. The American Daughters’ contributions during the War Between the States were ones of diplomacy and kindness defined as the “remedy of remedies” by Sister Matilda Coskery in her 1840s book, Advices on the Care of the Sick.

In Balm of Hope, McNeil has painstakingly amassed approximately 146 documents and organized them into three parts preceded by an introduction by Janet Leigh Bucklew. Each part includes a brief note as to the historical significance of the documents that follow, and a number of the letters include editorial comment. Although the introduction and commentaries lack historical rigor and context most notably in terms of nursing history, the compilation as a whole is a valuable contribution that can be used by historians in future works. However, the index does little to aid the health care or nurse historian who has a specific focus. For example, general headings such as “wounded” are listed with medical terms such as “wounds.” Political gems such as presidential acknowledgments of the Daughters’ contributions are easy to locate; however, scholarly nursing history will have to be constructed from this work by carefully mining the 506 pages of transcribed manuscripts. The work includes footnotes but does not include a bibliography, making it a challenge to trace historical sources partially cited in subsequent footnotes. Appendix G, “Selected Resources for the Study of Catholic Sister Nurses,” fails to include some of the most noted scholarly American Catholic nursing histories of the period.

These points aside, this book provides an important archive of the Daughters’ service to humanity that can now impel historians to illuminate further the nuances of women religious’ contributions to nursing and the gentler side of history—creating caring community.