The Wound Dresser / A Series of Letters Written from the Hospitals in Washington during the War of the Rebellion

A series of firsthand letters and sketches records long visits to military hospitals around Washington, portraying wards, convalescent camps, and the scale of wounded and sick men. The narrator describes practical nursing tasks—dressing amputations, tending chronic illness—and the converted public buildings and crowded sheds that held patients. Vivid observational detail combines with reflective passages on duty, compassion, memory, and the emotional cost of caregiving. Editorial material frames the correspondence and situates it amid broader accounts of hospital life, producing a tone that blends documentary reporting with quiet, intimate empathy for the sufferers.