Hospital Sketches

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of racism, illness, and death.

Alcott becomes ill, and a young surgeon urges her to rest. Others warn her that she might catch pneumonia. She resists their admonitions, but when her coughing and dizziness become severe, she accepts that she must rest and leave the caring to others.

In case any of her readers are inclined to imbue “hospital life with a halo of charms,” she describes its “ruinous condition” (47). The windows are cracked, floor bare, mattresses thin, mirror the size “of a muffin, and about as reflective” (47), and rats inhabit her closet. Despite the unappetizing food, it is gobbled up quickly, and any latecomers to meals find little left. Not wanting to neglect her patients for mealtimes, Alcott stocks crackers, cheese, and apples, but the rats and bugs have their way with the cheese and crackers, and the apples vanish, probably filched by children. When she first goes off duty, she tries to continue appearing at meals so as not to distract others from their work, but after losing her appetite, she seeks a cure in exercising outdoors in the sun.

Though it is January, the days are mild. She explores the city. She goes to the Armory Hospital, a model of warmth, cleanliness, and good order. Alcott observes a nurse cheerfully carrying out her tasks alongside well-trained attendants. Alcott reflects that her superiors would dismiss her if they heard the way she contrasted the Armory with her own hospital, which she describes as poorly managed.

In support of her criticism, she offers an anecdote of dressing the wound of a patient, Sam Dammer. She cannot find the necessary supplies. She sends an attendant to another ward to get some, but he returns empty-handed, having been denied the supplies by that ward’s nurse. Alcott then goes to the surgery, where Mr. Toddypestle informs her that she will need an order from her own ward’s surgeon. After a protracted search, she finds him in the midst of a complex amputation. He finally gives her the order, but when she returns with it, Mr. Toddypestle has left to smoke a cigar.

Since she is “freeing [her] mind” (51), she takes the opportunity to register a protest against patients being used as attendants. She recalls instances when patients became sicker or even died performing duties that should have been done by “strong, properly trained, and cheerful men” (52). Nurses end up having to do double duty, then are blamed for anything that goes wrong.

Alcott goes to the Senate Chamber but is too late to see any proceedings. Instead, she finds children playing as they gather wastepaper into bags. She explores the galleries, paintings, and statuary. Her final outing is to Georgetown Heights. The following days bring wind and rain. Stuck in her room in low spirits, she stops eating. Her “sister nurses” (54) feed her body with food and her mind with kind words, but Alcott continues to suffer from physical ailments.

Forbidden to work in the wards, she busies herself with mending and observing the “moving panorama” (54) outside her window. She notes the coming and going of ambulances, nurses, patients, and opulently-dressed men and women. She takes special pleasure in the mules that pull army wagons and the pigs, which she had never observed before coming to Washington.

What she finds most interesting are “[her] colored brothers and sisters” shaped by “generations of slavery” and “so unlike the respectable members of society [she]’d known in moral Boston” (57). She had been warned not to speak out aggressively about enslavement because of Confederate sympathies “even under the respectable nose of Father Abraham” (57). Her observations in Washington make her want to abandon nursing “white bodies” in order to “care for these black souls” (57), whom she describes as kind-hearted and good-tempered but encouraged by enslavement to be “obsequious, trickish, lazy and ignorant” (57). She respects their good cheer despite being so wronged.

She had expected to be accused of prejudice but is surprised to find that it is the other way around: Her neighbors are shocked that she treats Black and white Americans the same way. She notes the racial slurs men use when speaking of or to them, and the way nurses never praise or thank them for their service, which stokes Alcott’s Abolitionist ire. When she picks up a Black toddler in the nurse’s kitchen, a Virginia woman chides her, saying she never touches Black Americans. This prompts Alcott to reply, “More shame for you” (58), kiss the child, and lecture the woman. Rather than influence her positively, the episode provokes the woman to regard Alcott as “a dangerous fanatic” (58). The Emancipation Act goes into effect on January 1st. At the first toll of midnight, Alcott opens her window and waves a handkerchief at the Black men singing “Glory, Hallelujah” (59) outside.

Her illness makes her empathize with the patients more and appreciate the care she receives from the doctors and nurses. Letters from home express concern, encouraging her to return. Initially, she resists, but her father arrives to bring her home. She does not regret her service, despite her illness, and encourages others not to fear enlisting in the cause.