"Commissioned by God: Mother Bickerdyke during the Civil War

Military Medicine, Oct 2003 by Sartin, Jeffrey S

Mary Ann Bickerdyke, nurse, herbalist, and humanitarian, stood out as a singular figure during the American Civil War and afterward. She advocated nutrition and herbal medicines at a time when "heroic," if futile, treatments were often the rule. Her compassion toward ill soldiers was legendary and provided her with the nickname "Mother." Nevertheless, she did not hesitate to stand up to the bureaucratic and occasionally incompetent physician administrators who opposed her. Working in an arena typically off limits for women, she exceeded the bounds proscribed for her sex during the 19th century as a naturopathic physician, humanitarian, and social reformer.

Introduction

Mary Ann Bickerdyke, nurse, herbalist, and humanitarian, had few equals in getting down to the hard physical labor of caring for victims of war and poverty. During the American Civil War, when treatment methods were both crude and generally ineffective, she stood out as a fervent advocate for attending to both the physical and emotional needs of patients. She fit in squarely with her contemporaries Dorothea Dix and Clara Barton as a forceful social reformer at a time when women were usually relegated to an inferior role. Although her efforts were more narrowly focused than those of Dix and Barton, Bickerdyke became an iconic figure of the Civil War and postwar period through her combination of strong will and compassion.

She came to the attention of an audience starved for uplifting stories from the war through the publication of numerous articles and memoirs attesting to her accomplishments.1,2 Known as "Mother" to her grateful patients, she was described as a "Cyclone in Calico" to anyone who stood in her way.3 The latter included the numerous military surgeons, Union officers, railroad magnates, and assorted rogues and drunks who crossed her path in the latter 1800s and whom she did not hesitate to confront.

Born Mary Ann Ball in rural Knox County, Ohio on July 19, 1817, she was raised primarily by her grandparents and early on showed an interest in both books and sports. At age 16 years, she was sent to boarding school in Oberlin, Ohio and according to an early biography may have attended classes at the newly founded Oberlin College, although she did not graduate.1,3 Photographs suggest a dark-haired, plain, unadorned, and serious woman, although her eyes remain strikingly warm and affecting (Fig. 1). Accounts of her casual speech and letters convey a homespun and colorful temperament.

Ambiguity surrounds her medical education. Most contemporary sources state that Mary Ann Bickerdyke began her nursing studies in Cincinnati in 1837 under the direction of the respectable Dartmouth-trained Dr. Reuben Mussey.1,3 However, biographer Nina Brown Baker speculates, without specific evidence, that Bickerdyke learned under the unorthodox naturopathic practitioner Dr. Zimri Hussey at his Physio-Botanic Medical College.3 This argument is supported by the nurse's lifelong focus on herbal and nutritional medicine, areas generally outside the scope of traditional training. She worked as a housekeeper and visiting nurse before her marriage to the widower Robert Bickerdyke in 1847. During their marriage, by all accounts a happy one, she raised three stepchildren as well as her own two young sons and became active in church and civic activities. In 1856, she moved with her family to Galesburg, Illinois, in a vain attempt to improve her husband's failing health. Following his death in 1858 at age 54 years, she hung out her shingle as a nurse and naturopathic practitioner: "Mary Ann Bickerdyke, widow of Robt. Botanic physician. Office and residence."1

Mother Bickerdyke in Wartime

In May 1861, the 44-year-old widow attended services at the Brick Congregational Church in Galesburg and heard the pastor read a moving letter of request for medical volunteers from Dr. Benjamin Woodward, Galesburg physician and regimental surgeon for the 22nd Illinois infantry.3 She answered the call, encouraged that friends would take over the care of her two young sons in her absence. On a sweltering June day in 1861, she rode a train several hundred miles to Cairo, Illinois, where Dr. Woodward met and drove her in his personal carriage to the Union field hospitals.

The sights at the six makeshift tent hospitals were appalling. Despite the efforts of volunteer nurse Mary Safford, nicknamed the "Cairo Angel" (who later became a Boston women's physician and feminist), approximately 450 men ill with diarrhea, measles, and typhoid fever were housed in filthy conditions. Their primary caregivers were other invalids who were supposed to function as nurses but were themselves too ill to do the job: "On a cot near the door a human scarecrow sat [with an empty tin water pail at his feet]. . . this man was the nurse, and one of his duties was to fetch drinking water from the nearest storage barrel."3 Mother Bickerdyke immediately went to work, recruiting healthy soldiers to help her clean out the tent areas and bathe and clothe the ill men. She then worked on improving the inadequate field kitchens. Men too ill to swallow solid food were given hot toddies: a mixture of whiskey, hot water, and brown sugar. (A staunch temperance advocate, Bickerdyke despised the recreational use of alcohol although relied on it for medicinal purposes.)