Heroines of Mercy Street : the real nurses of the Civil War / Pamela D. Toler, PhD. ; foreword by Ridley Scott.

"Tells the true stories of the nurses at Mansion House, the Alexandria, Virginia hotel turned wartime hospital, and the setting for the PBS show Mercy Street"-- Publisher's description.

The nurses of the Civil War ushered in a new era for medicine in the midst of tremendous hardship. Toler tells the true stories of the nurses at Mansion House, the Alexandria, Virginia hotel turned wartime hospital. Women like Dorothea Dix, Mary Phinney, and Anne Reading saw casualties on a scale Americans had never seen before, and working conditions were abysmal-- but they met the challenges every step of the way.