Sweet Restorer: Diary of a Civil War Nurse (Expanded, Annotated)

By Elvira J. Powers

Not all of the suffering in the American Civil War was experienced by front-line soldiers. Doctors and nurses shared in what we today call post traumatic stress disorder. Not many of them wrote as eloquently as Elvira Powers.Having already suffered the death of four children before the war, and with her husband away in the Union army, Elvira Powers headed to the south to work in the Union hospitals."'A hospital is no place to form attachments,' said one lady in this hospital to another. Perhaps it is not wise to form attachments, but if they grow themselves, as between a mother and sick child, with every cry of pain, or bestowal of attention, what is one to do about it? It happens that my large family of boys, being under the guardianship of their Uncle Sam, are liable at any time to be torn from my maternal oversight."Elvira saw and attempted to relieve a great deal of suffering of young men torn to pieces by war and sickened by disease. Fortunately for us as readers, she not only wrote her in her journal with a tender, articulate voice, but she relieves us, as she did herself, with great wit and humor throughout.In 1866, with the war over, she turned her journal into one of the best accounts of combat hospital life ever written.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1519046480
• ISBN13: 9781519046482
• Release Date: November 2016
• Publisher: Independently published
• Length: 186 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.5" x 6.0"