![]() Foster, in fact there doesn't seem to have been a Dr. There was no real life budding romance with Dr. Her husband died from complications following surgery- not lingering for long and she had been living on the prairie in Illinois helping family. It surprised me to learn that the real life Mary Phinney Von Olnhausen was over 40 when she was sent to Mansion House and by the end of the war, she was almost 50. What they did have, however, were visitors, like the character Emma Green in the series, who informally visits the boys and helps make them more comfortable. The Confederate states did not have an organized system of female nurses owing to the tradition of "true womanhood" where women did not work outside the home. Nurses were supposed to spinsters or widows over 30, plain and upright. Dorothea Dix, best known for prison reform, followed up on Nightingale's triumph in the Crimea during the Civil War. The mastermind behind the idea of female nurses was Florence Nightingale in the Crimea, a decade earlier. This is a brief look into the lives of the real women who served as nurses during the Civil War. At least half the time I'm writing outside of "my field", exploring odd corners of the past with field-tested research skills, a red-hot library card, and a large bump of curiosity.īasically, I'm interested in the times and places where two cultures meet and change each other. On any given day I could be working on World War I recruiting posters, the mud mosques of West Africa, the first European translation of the Arabian Nights, Napoleon's invasion of Egypt, or the history of absinth. These days I write about a wide range of historical topics for history buffs, nerdy kids and-you get the idea. That belief is often reflected in the topics I choose to write about, whether I'm working on a small story (feather hats in ancient Peru, anyone?) or a big one (Mankind: the Story of All of Us). I feel strongly that the West in general and Americans in particular need to know more about the history of other parts of the world. Officially my degree is in the history of the Indian sub-continent, with strong sub-fields in European imperialism and Islam. I wanted to write for history buffs and nerdy kids and the general intelligent reader. I wanted to write about history for a broader audience than the other five people interested in my dissertation topic. ![]() The first day of my PhD program at University of Chicago, my advisor said, "You know there are no jobs, right?" I knew, but I didn't care. ![]()
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