L. P. Brockett, Women's work in the civil war: a record of heroism, patriotism and patience

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[275] hundred invalid soldiers, many of them sick past recovery, and returned as far as Memphis. On this trip the strength and endurance of Miss Parsons were tried to the utmost, and the ministrations of herself and her associates to the poor, helpless and suffering men, several of whom died on the passage up the river, were constant and unremitting. At Memphis, after transferring the sick to the hospitals, an order was received from General Grant to load the boat with troops and return immediately to Vicksburg, an order prompted by some military exigency, and Miss Parsons and the other female nurses were obliged to return to St. Louis.

For a few weeks after her return she suffered from an attack of malarious fever, and on her recovery was assigned to duty as superintendent of female nurses at the Benton Barracks Hospital, the largest of all the hospitals in St. Louis, built out of the amphitheatre and other buildings in the fair grounds of the St. Louis Agricultural Society, and placed in charge of Surgeon Ira Russell, an excellent physician from Natick, Mass. In this large hospital there were often two thousand patients, and besides the male nurses detailed from the army, the corps of female nurses consisted of one to each of the fifteen or twenty wards, whose duty it was to attend to the special diet of the feebler patients, to see that the wards were kept in order, the beds properly made, the dressing of wounds properly done, to minister to the wants of the patients, and to give them words of good cheer, both by reading and conversation-softening the rougher treatment and manners of the male nurses, by their presence, and performing the more delicate offices of kindness that are natural to woman.

In this important and useful service these women nurses, many of them having but little experience, needed one of their own number of superior knowledge, judgment and experience, to supervise their work, counsel and advise with them, instruct them in their duties, secure obedience to every necessary regulation, and good order in the general administration of this important branch