The U. S. Sanitary Commission

William Y. Thompson is a native of Louisiana, but received his Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina. He has been on the faculty at Presbyterian College but is at the present a member of the Department of History of the Louisiana Polytechnic Institute in Ruston, Louisiana. The U. S. Sanitary Commission WILLIAM Y. THOMPSON SAFEGUARDING THE HEALTH OF THE INDIVIDUAL SOLDlEB JS an integral part of present day warfare. Scientific progress, statistics and percentages, plus corps of able medical men have joined to make the American army the best cared for fighting machine in the world. The modern soldier fights not only in sanitary security but in relative comfort as well. The knitted sock from home has been replaced by bountiful government issue adequate for all needs. The services of well organized groups, such as the Red Cross, aid in softening the transition from civilian to military life. Less than a hundred years ago, the American volunteer soldier, entering the battles of the Civil War, faced an entirely different situation. Ahead lay death from enemy bullets. Behind him plodded a medical bureau, inadequately equipped in materiel, spirit, and vision to protect him from destruction by disease. The touches of home consisted mainly of letters of encouragement from loved ones. That he would emerge from the fray a casualty was not merely a possibility — it was an almost certainty . As the largely volunteer and untrained armies gathered, the Union Medical Department wheezed and coughed into action along old, conventional lines. Many of its members, past their prime, were still thinking in terms of limited frontier warfare. When the war increased in scope, their vision unfortunately did not expand. Meanwhile, patriotism, touched off by the firing on Fort Sumter, was running high in the Northern states. Zealous women began the collection of supplies for the benefit of the soldiers. The situation was ripe for united and guided civilian activity. On April 25, 1861, around fifty-five women, gathered together at the New York Infirmary for Women in New York City, suggested that an attempt be made to consolidate all of the aid societies recently established 41 42W I L L I A M Y. T H O M P S O X throughout the country into one central association.1 A public meeting for this purpose was held in Cooper Institute on the morning of April 29. "Articles of Organization" were presented which united the women of New York into the "Woman's Central Association of Relief." Dr. Valentine Mott, well-known New York surgeon, was appointed president of the association and the Reverend Dr. Henry W. Bellows, Boston born Harvard graduate and prominent Unitarian minister, vice-president.2 The newly formed association lost no time in getting to work. It asked local societies to look to it for guidance. It advanced confidently to clasp hands with the Medical Department of the United States Army. A long and exhaustive list of questions pertaining to the future needs of the army was directed to the ranking medical officer of the army in New York. But this first contact between female enthusiasts and regular army brass buried under urgent preparations for war brought a dash of cold water on the aspirations of the ladies. The association was told that the Medical Department could take care of its own, and the work which the women proposed to do, although generous, would be superfluous and exaggerated in scope beyond necessity.3 The determined women were not to be denied. In conjunction with delegates of the Advisory Committee of the Boards of Physicians and Surgeons of the Hospitals of New York, and the New York Medical Association for Furnishing Hospital Supplies in Aid of the Army, representatives from women's associations went to Washington to confer with medical authorities and the War Department on the matter of volunteer aid to the army. The Washington which the delegates entered was a city in turmoil. The sudden pressure of war and the rapid influx of troops into the capital city combined to bring perplexity and confusion.4 The visiting civilians saw the necessity for an efficient authority in the national army to exercise diligence in safeguarding the...