New England novelist Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888) is perhaps best known as the author of young adult fiction, including Little Women (1868), and Little Men (1871). However, Alcott put her writing talents to use in describing her Civil War experiences as a volunteer nurse in an autobiographical account called Hospital Sketches (1863).
The result was not what one might expect from a nurse’s narrative. Alcott’s account is unique because of its irreverence and her extremely dry sense of humor. Giving herself the literary nom de plume of “Tribulation Periwinkle,” she describes the ironies of being an Abolitionist wanting to get in on the “excitement” of the war but finding herself in over her head. Alcott contracted typhoid fever during her Civil War service, for which she was treated with mercury; scholars have speculated that the health problems she suffered later on throughout her life were related to her exposure to mercury.
Here Alcott describes her interactions with wounded soldiers from the
