CAPTAIN SALLY
IT IS NO SECRET THAT health care during the Civil War was rudimentary at best. Most of the 750,000 or so deaths suffered during the conflict occurred because of illness, disease, or infection. And at a time when amputation was common in the treatment of wounded men, hospitals were not known for their solicitous or effective treatment of the stricken. Therefore, when an unassuming young Virginia woman opened her own private hospital for the care of Confederate soldiers, people had every reason to presume that it wouldn’t differ at all from the others. They were wrong.
From the moment of her
