Viola Lavina Gold

From Find A Grave Memorial# 31282456:

Richmond Times Dispatch 16 February 1919; page 45 MRS. W. H. GOLD DEAD; NURSED IN CIVIL WAR Was Eighty-Two Years Old, and Related to Sam Houston, and Mother of Richmond Doctor. WINCHESTER, VA., Feb. 15. - Funeral services were held Thursday for Mrs. Viola L. Gold, eighty-two years old, widow of William Henry Gold, and prominently identified with the Presbyterian Church. She was the mother of Philip H., John C. and Hunter B. Gold and Mrs. Frank B. Crawford, of Winchester; Dr. Edwin T. Gold, Richmond; Miss Mary F. Gold, Norfolk, and Miss Margaret R. Gold, Baltimore, and the sister of Archibald H. Pitman, Mount Jackson, Va. Through her maternal grandfather, she was a near relaltive of General Sam Houston, and knew him well. She helped to nurse hundreds of sick and wounded Confederate soldiers during the War Between the States.

Link:http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=31282456

From Nursing in the Civil War South; by Maggie MacLean

American nursing was still in its infancy at the outbreak of the Civil War. In the antebellum South, women usually served as nurses within their own families. On large plantations, the master's wife nursed her husband, children, and slaves. Many Southern women were already accustomed to caring for ill patients, and nursing was considered a woman's duty.

Still, it was not a job that ladies of breeding and stature would volunteer for. The Southern woman was regarded as delicate and modest. When Fort Sumter was fired upon, and the wounded and dying came pouring in from the battlefields, the South found itself unprepared to care for its casualties.

The first nurses to serve the Confederacy were recuperating male soldiers, whose own illnesses prevented them from providing proper care. Plus, many of these men resented being appointed to hospital duty.

In response, the women of the South began to organize their own volunteer groups such as the Ladies' Soldiers' Relief Society and the Association for the Relief of Maimed Soldiers. Some women set up their own private hospitals in homes and donated buildings. The women of these organizations provided proper medical care for the wounded and ill soldiers of the Confederacy.

Southern nurses cleaned wounds, performed minor surgery, administered treatments and endured hard physical labor. They worked under deplorable conditions and had to fight off the infectious diseases that ran rampant through the hospital wards. Each nurse was expected to carry out a long list of nursing and non-nursing duties. They bathed patients, changed dressings on their wounds, distributed food and administered medications.

Nurses were also expected to beat and air out the straw mattresses their patients slept on, to change the straw in the mattresses every month and to scrub the floors in their ward. Some nurses were even pressed into service as hospital cooks. They built fires for cooking, washed patients' faces, irrigated virulent wounds, and scrubbed underwear.

And they were expected to serve as a mother figure to the soldiers. They wrote letters for illiterate or handicapped patients and counseled them and their families. They had to always be feminine and cheerful.

As the war progressed, remote Southern towns were overwhelmed with the number of wounded coming in from the battlefields and were unprepared to care for them. But many Southern women had a strong desire to assuage the suffering of their protectors in the Confederate Army, despite the possibility of contracting debilitating and fatal infectious diseases.

Link: http://civilwarwomenblog.com/nursing-in-the-civil-war-south/