A renowned nurse of the civil war By the time of the American Civil War medical care of wounded soldiers near to the field of battle and within military hospitals had become well established. Many committed and resourceful women on both sides of the conflict volunteered to work as nurses and several have left accounts of their experiences. The principal subject of this book, Mary Phinney, is one who served in a Union Army facility, and her experiences have been dramatized as a television series. Mary Phinney was the widow of an impoverished German aristocrat, Baron Gustav von Olnhausen. She was a committed abolitionist. Her diaries provide essential insights into the medical techniques employed in military hospitals during the civil war period and have become highly regarded reference works. She later went on to work as a nurse in the Franco-Prussian War. Phinney's book is accompanied in this Leonaur edition by a short account of the career of another famous and highly regarded nurse of the period, Superintendent of Nurses Dorothea L. Dix. Leonaur editions are newly typeset and are not facsimiles; each title is available in softcover and hardback with dustjacket.