These sketches were beautifully done. The preparations to leave and her frustration with disorganization she confronted were humorous. Her parody on "The Charge of the Light Brigade" by Lord Tennyson was unexpected and heartening, as I'm a sucker for parody. Her recounting of her experience with the soldier who had been shot in the stomach was touching, and her recounting of John the Blacksmith from Virginia was heartbreaking and poignant.

The big secret to these sketches' success is how personally invested she became towards her patients and her sincere appreciation of the other nurses and the doctors with which she worked. There is humor throughout, such as her observations about the donkeys while she was sick, but you have no doubt that she took everything seriously.

This is a slightly fictionalized memoir by Louisa May Alcott (1863). Several years later she would become the immortal author of Little Women, but Hospital Sketches was her first literary success.

During the Civil War, Alcott volunteered as an army nurse. She was 30, which was the minimum age allowed by Dorothea Dix for a position that was almost-unheard-of – female nurse. (Florence Nightingale's nursing school had just opened in London, and there was no such school in the USA.) Alcott was posted in a poorly-run army hospital in Washington DC, and wrote several letters home about her experience. Afterwards, she published them in slightly fictionalized form; she changed the names, including her own (she refers to herself as Tribulation Periwinkle).

The book's first two chapters ("sketches") are pretty funny, focusing on the wannabe nurse's misadventures on the trip from Concord to DC. Then she's thrown right away into the challenging work of helping the wounded from the Battle of Fredericksburg. But only a matter of weeks later, she comes down with typhoid fever and becomes a patient herself. Eventually her father shows up to bring her home. (What's not recorded here is that the doctors treated Alcott with mercury – which was not yet recognized as toxic – as a result of which she had health problems for the rest of her life.)

Hospital Sketches is well-written, displaying Alcott's ability to vary the tone of her tale from sober to sentimental and back. It helps if you're familiar with Dickens novels, because she drops references to characters from several of them.

Hospital Sketches is an interesting look at a short period of Louisa May Alcott's life, that spent in Washington DC nursing Civil War soldiers. Alcott spent about 3 months working in a hospital, where she became so ill herself that her father came to bring her home. Alcott uses the somewhat didactic, preachy style she used for her children's books.

Not only an account of Alcott's hospital and patients, the book also describes some of her Civil War rambles in DC during her off duty time.

The book is biographical, but the nurse in the first person story has a different name.

Hospital Sketches looks like it was typed on an old manual typewriter, and is difficult to read.

Chafing at not being able to march off to war because a woman, Alcott decided on her 30th birthday in 1862 to volunteer to be an Army nurse. She served at a hospital in Georgetown for six weeks, caring for casualties of the Battle of Fredericksburg, before contracting typhoid fever.

At the urging of family and friends, she later lightly fictionalized the letters she wrote home describing her experiences, and they appeared to acclaim in newspapers before being collected into this book, which provided her with her first literary success and fame.

She was aware of the humorous tone of most of her sketches, and defended it from some contemporary critics who thought it inappropriate, saying "it is a part of my religion to look well after the cheerfulnesses of life, and let the dismals shift for themselves". Certainly, there are poignant, moving scenes of suffering, sadness and death that are described touchingly, as well.

She was a member of a staunch Abolitionist family and believed fiercely in the cause herself, but it is striking how clearly this coexisted with a sense of white supremacy even as she takes more overt racism to task.

A short read and well worth the time.

"One may live and learn much in a month. A good fit of illness proves the value of health; real danger tries one's mettle; and self-sacrifice sweetens character. Let no one who sincerely desires to help the work in this way, delay going through any fear; for the worth of life lies in the experiences that fill it, and this is one which cannot be forgotten."

I've decided to continue to start off my year with short reads in the hopes that they will serve as a buffer for my reading challenge when and if I peter out again later on. At only 112 pages, this one certainly fits the bill. I've had Hospital Sketches, sitting only my shelf for a few years now (it was a procurement from my bookshop-working days), which means it also ticks off another one of my reading goals for this year: read more from the collection already on my bookshelves.

At the time, I bought this because I enjoy history and 19th century literature, am a big fan of Little Women and also loved the only other text I had up until now read of Alcott's, her satirical short story, "Transcendental Wild Oats," facts which led me to believe I was well disposed to be a fan of the author in general. Hospital Sketches confirms that for me. Despite the heavy subject matter at its core, the book is balanced with a healthy dose of levity and a highly readable, colloquial writing style that make it an all-around terrific read.

Sketches first came to be from the letters Alcott wrote home while serving as a volunteer nurse in Washington D.C. When they were published as one volume, the account gained the attention of other writers, and helped launch Alcott's career. Reading this, it is easy to see why. At just 3o years old, and despite only being a nurse for six short weeks, Alcott penned a firsthand account that is entirely immersive. Each "chapter" records a different phase of her time as Nurse "Tribulation Periwinkle": her decision to go, her journey to get there, her time on the ward, and, after she falls ill herself, an experiment in 19th century "people-watching," as she at first walks D.C. and then, once confined to her room, looks down on the people below from her hospital window.

The segment on tending the soldiers is unsurprisingly the most touching. Alcott renders wonderful, full portraits of the men on her ward, no less moving for being brief. An account of one dying soldier in particular brought tears to my eyes, though I only knew him for a few short paragraphs. She brings to light the voices, experiences, and suffering of many other, describing everything their range of countenances to their various injuries, including typhoid, pneumonia, bullet wounds, and ailments of the mind that in Civil War times had yet to be named. Alcott also writes well of the challenges of hospital work, the long hours, the flustered doctors, and the ineptitude and disorganization of the hospital itself, which was erected as an overflow facility when the better-run hospitals were full-up.

The other sketches, however, are no less fascinating. I particularly enjoyed her wayward depiction of getting her train ticket to D.C., and later, her walk around the city to the Capitol Building and her thoughts on the various statues. In all, this is a deeply interesting and personal primary account of a woman's experiences during the Civil War. I am glad I read it, and would say it is well worth a quick read for anyone with an interest in the author or her subject matter.

Hospital Sketches provides an important view of religion, nurses, and hospitals during the Civil War, while also revealing sundry aspects of Alcott's person through its characteristic writing.

Hospital Sketches begins with a description of Alcott saying goodbye to her mother. Her mother, significantly, hesitates, not wanting to let go of her daughter but sends her off regardless to let her do her duty, the implication being that Alcott's decision to go to the military is more than just one of doing her duty as an American citizen, but as a child of God.

Religion is a motivation for the characters from the beginning of the narrative and permeates throughout. Everything from the descriptions of the death scenes to the accounts of Lousia's sickness is filled with little reflections on the correct decision to make to be worthy of entering the land beyond without night. Religion is more than just a belief for the people of Alcott's day, it is a firmly ingrained part of life; a reason for living.

Alcott recounts a scene where the people in the hospital gather around for the Sunday service. The service lacks a good priest, and their practices are limited given the setting, but the one day where they prayed together is nonetheless more important than the other six combined. The service is more than just a social gathering and a place of rest from the weariness of life, it is also where people are anointed with purpose. The Bible is an instruction manual for life, and the stories within can give meaning to their actions. People need to have a constant moral guide which they can refer to; especially in times of distress and war. The Bible, then, is an important tool in crafting the basis of society for Alcott's time.

Nowadays, without the supporting structure of religion, we are forced to reckon with our existence with much less direction. We have no set moral guide to refer to: we must scramble to create our own values out of blithe darkness, and every step of the way we will ponder whether our moral compass is correct, changing it or holding fast to it, all the while being uncertain of where it will need us.

Religion is an easy way out and it provides answers where Atheism cannot. We can see Alcott and the other soldiers in the hospital coping with the death of their comrades by assuring themselves that the good they have done in their lives would let them enter that land without night. The suffering of the poor is made holy by the fact that their honesty and work have much more moral value than the rich who are blessed with material goods, granting them a much better place in the afterlife for having been brave despite poverty.

Imagine if the people of Alcott's time did not have religion to support them. Knowing that your actions have some greater meaning is stabilizing. They can suffer knowing that something comes out of it and they will eventually be rewarded. If religion is taken away, people are lost. They will start to wonder what they can get out of serving in the military and bearing horrific wounds. Serving then seems less like an honorable sacrifice, and more like unreasonable suffering. Not even the most forbearing person will undergo suffering if it is for no reason. Of course, that is not to say that people today have no reason for fighting wars. We are just fighting for different reasons: because we believe that our actions have a moral purpose, because we take value in eliminating poverty and famine. Religion provided an important framework for people in the past, but it is no longer a necessary framework in our present day.

The hospital strengthens Alcott's character and reveals the sacrifices needed to ensure a prosperous society. She learns the strength of the men who go to war and the strength of the doctors and nurses who tend after them. Being exposed to the death and suffering that comes with war, Alcott's view of life is broadened, and she becomes more conscientious of her position in the world. Working at the hospital means seeing the lives that are sacrificed to build the good health of the nation. Seeing the sacrifices made, one becomes more appreciative of the stability of the nation that has been built. Their everyday life is sweetened by the ills that they have endured in the hospital. It is analogous to Alcott's sickness with typhoid: having become sick, one appreciates health more -- having seen war, one can cherish the fruit of it: peace. She ends by touting the value of serving to learn the important lessons that she learned there.

I respect Alcott immensely for wanting to participate in the war effort. Another aspect of Alcott's character revealed through this desire is her frequently stated wish to be a man. She begrudges the sex that she was assigned at birth, but less because she regrets being a woman -- she clearly relishes the womanly power that her care effects on the soldiers, and speaks glowingly of the sisterhood formed between her and another woman who lost a sibling -- but because of the restrictions that it places on her being. She abhors that her sex prevents her from conversing with men without restraint and from joining the military to serve on the front lines. But these complaints have less to do with her sex itself than the societal restrictions that have come with her sex. I think that she does not necessarily want to become a man, but the power that is given to men in a patriarchal society.

Besides that, Alcott's prose is lively and characteristic. Her voice shines through the text; it is clear that is it she, Alcott speaking, rather than anyone else speaking for her. Her honest tone does a great deal in lending legitimacy to the experiences she describes. I laughed at how, during her sickness, she developed "a realizing sense of bones in the human frame", because it describes so perfectly how conscious you become of the frailty of your body when you become sick. It is the awareness that we are flesh and blood beings in the end, not immortal, and I have often felt it acutely when I have gone on runs -- I notice that the disparate parts of my body, do exist when usually I don't because I move them so habitually. It is only when your limbs are afflicted by some great pain or new sensation that you seem to acknowledge that, this is an appendage, which after all, is not completely attached to your body, and liable to being separated given enough force. I like how she described it, and I will be sure to use it in daily conversation.... "a realizing sense of my legs striking the pavement".... very nice, very nice. I also agree with the sentiments that Alcott scatters across the Sketches, showing clearly her thoughts on life. One that I particularly like is at the end, when she states her conviction that "it is a part of my religion to look well after the cheerfulnesses of life, and let the dismals shift for themselves; believing, with good Sir Thomas More, that it is wise to "be merrie in God." Ultimately, though I am not religious, I think Alcott to be very respectably Christian, and think it would do the world a lot of good if many Christians today were more like her.

I have more thoughts, but these are the ones that most immediately come to mind.
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During the Civil War, Louisa May Alcott became a nurse. She did not stay long, catching Typhoid Fever and having to go home to recover. But the public was very interested in anything war related and so Louisa wrote "Hospital Sketches" which was fiction, but very based on her experiences. The story is short, roughly 85 pages.

There is something about Alcott's style. It is both easy to read and able to get involved in, but it can also feel infantile. I feel like she is trying to do everything in a cheerful and resolute manner. She even describes the death of a soldier without a depth of emotion. But I think she meant for there to be emotion. Maybe it was just the writing of the time or just my lack of connection, but I don't think it was very deep.

Also, Alcott is very into quoting other things. She is a true fan of literature and it reflects as she is quoting poems, Dickens, etc. Most of these references are now obscure and I was glad that my copy had footnotes to let me know what I was supposed to be appreciating.

Starts off as an entertaining sketch about traveling, then becomes a piquant description of the hospital itself, including one tear-inducing death that seems a model, in different elements, for several of those in Alcott's fiction.

Alcott spent six weeks as a nurse during the Civil War until she was forced to return home because of illness. These sketches were originally letters published in a Boston newspaper but they have been presented here as fiction based on her experiences. Apparently the horrors of what she saw never left her but the opening chapters at least have an inappropriate tone, arch and playful and girly, and it is hard to see under them what it was really like. This tone may have been what was required by the newspaper. Travelling by train and boat and then train again in 1860 something sounds both exciting and difficult. I wish she had been able to leave a better picture of what it was like.

She says she was never ill before she went and never well after!

'Nursing' seemed to consist of washing and feeding and listening to patients and providing support for the dying. This was before Florence Nightingale revolutionised the nursing profession but I think Louisa May Alcott isn't telling us everything. Perhaps this was one of the requirements of the Boston newspaper.

It's good that we have this eyewitness account of such an important time and place and events but it is frustratingly inadequate.

A series of vignettes by a go-getter spinster named Tribulation Periwinkle (it's Miss Louisa) who signs up to become an army nurse. She has no training, but is there to provide unskilled nursing to wounded men -- holding their hands as they die, helping them bathe, running interference with their well-meaning but obnoxious relatives. Her career ends when a young doctor exhorts Nurse P to take some time off, leading into an unreliably narrated section where Nurse P is bored and occasionally hallucinating, by which she means "deathly ill with typhoid fever". I really liked the postscript, in which the author responds to fanmail for an earlier edition of the sketches, which is as good as an AMA. Her readers want to know why the church and the state are not doing more for our wounded boys, thorny questions with no good answer.

As a healthcare worker, was hilarious to hear Louisa May Alcott daring a hospital administrator to switch places with her and her nurse co-workers and see how he likes working without proper conditions or supplies. Descriptions of patients of various types Miss Alcott cared for, which also spoke to me personally.

Louisa Mae Alcott served as a nurse for six weeks during the American Civil War. Though the nurse allegedly writing the work is a Miss Periwinkle it is quite likely a pseudonym. The first two chapters are narratives of how difficult it was for women to get anywhere in the patriarchal world. Like many writings of the period the descriptions given are lengthy but they are at times humorous and often to the point. It is a short work but an interesting insight into women and hospitals during that era of American history.