The PBS show Mercy Street is based on true stories of the nurses at Mansion House, the Alexandria, Virginia, hotel turned wartime hospital during the Civil War.
Women like Dorothea Dix, Mary Phinney, Anne Reading, and others rushed to be of service to their country during the war, responding to casualties on a scale Americans had never seen before under working conditions that were abysmal.
In Heroines of Mercy: The Real Nurses of the Civil War, Pamela D. Toler, PhD presents portraits of these true heroines, based on their diaries, letters, and books.
