Tag Archives: Mary Ann Bickerdyke
Mary Ann Bickerdyke
In the filthy chaos of a Union military hospital in Cairo, Illinois, in 1861, a 44-year-old widow named Mary Ann Bickerdyke stepped off a steamboat with crates of supplies—and into a nightmare. Wounded young soldiers, barely more than boys, lay moaning on blood-soaked cots. The air reeked of infection and waste. Surgeons operated with unwashed […]










