Military Medicine Part I Preview

This tour contains three types of stops:

• HONOR stops mark the gravesites of specific individuals.
• REMEMBER stops commemorate events, ideas, or groups of people.
• EXPLORE stops invite you to discover what this history means to you.

The history of military medicine, and medicine generally, is a history of eras. In each era, nurses, doctors, and scientists built on the knowledge and research of those who came before them, all united in their goal to prepare and protect service members — whether on or off the battlefield.

• As Surgeon General during the Civil War, Hammond made the U.S. Army hospital system safer and more efficient.
• He established the Army Medical Museum, known today as the National Museum of Health and Medicine.

Section 1 is the final resting ground for 24 Civil War nurses, including the first woman buried at Arlington National Cemetery for her own military service, rather than her husband’s or her father’s service. These women, with their decision and advocacy for burial here, forever changed the landscape of Arlington National Cemetery, expanding our nation’s understanding of who deserves to be honored and remembered.

Section 1, Grave 1262-RH

At the start of the Civil War, Caroline Grant Burghardt was too young to serve as a U.S. Army nurse. However, she was determined to serve and, with endorsements from male doctors, she obtained a waiver exempting her from the 30-year-old age requirement. Burghardt trained at Bellevue Hospital in New York City for approximately six weeks before traveling to Washington, D.C. to begin her service.

During the war, Burghardt served in fever and surgical wards in Washington, D.C. and at the sites of large battles, including Antietam and Gettysburg. She also served in Wilmington, North Carolina, and onboard the hospital ship General Barnes, looking after soldiers released from Andersonville, Georgia, and other military prisons. She received the following praise from Dorothea Dix for her wartime service:

“Her superior fidelity and skill required her assignment at the most difficult and responsible stations […] She won the respect and confidence of surgeons and the gratitude of patients.”

Caroline experienced bouts of smallpox and yellow fever in the course of her wartime service and injured her teeth from eating hardtack, dense crackers which were a staple of the Army’s Civil War diet. She received an invalid’s pension as a result.

After the war, Burghardt, who never married, secured a job at the Treasury Department as a clerk. In 1878, she earned a medical degree from Howard University and practiced medicine for several years as assistant to another female physician, Susan Edson. In 1913, at the age of 80, Burghardt took a new job in the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Navigation. She did not retire until May 1920, at which time she was just short of 87 years of age.

• In March 1865, Augusta was promoted to brevet lieutenant colonel, making him the highest ranking African American officer of the Civil War.
• Augusta was a founding professor of Howard University's College of Medicine.

• McGee was appointed as the Acting Assistant Surgeon of the U.S. Army which made her the only woman permitted to wear an officer’s uniform during the Spanish-American War.
• She drafted the legislation to establish the Army Nurse Corps and later helped the Navy establish the Navy Nurse Corps.
• McGee advocated for nurses’ rights and recognition, and defied social norms and paved the way for future female doctors and nurses.

Nurses in the Spanish-American War worked 14-hour shifts with 20-minute lunch breaks. They provided their own uniforms, which they also had to launder and maintain. Duties included giving ice baths, dressing wounds, preparing food, feeding soldiers, administering medicine, and attempting to maintain sanitary conditions for medical care in tents, fields, and overcrowded buildings. Many locations experienced nurse shortages that put more stress on the nurses they had. Some nurses worked until they were too ill to do so. The pay was railroad fare to the assigned location, $30 a month, meals, and lodging (sometimes).

• As a Civil War veteran and amputee, Tanner dedicated himself to the mission of preserving veterans' rights.
• Tanner was the stenographer who recorded Lincoln's eyewitness testimony of his assassination in 1865.

• Sternberg was one of the first bacteriologists in the United States, studying bacterial diseases like yellow fever and typhoid.
• His research helped eliminate yellow fever.

• Prevented the spread of tropical diseases like yellow fever and malaria during the Spanish-American War through his work improving sanitation.
• Served as chief sanitation officer in Panama from 1904-1914, keeping service members and workers alive while the United States constructed the Panama Canal.