Existing comment:
Sally Louisa Thompkins
b 9 November 1833 / d 2 July 1916
When Confederate authorities closed Richmond's private hospitals, Tompkins was awarded a captain's commission -- the only one granted to a woman -- so that her twenty-two-bed hospital could remain open and draw from government food and medical supplies. By the end of the war, 1,334 Confederate soldiers passed through its doors. Tompkins's insistence on cleanliness led to fewer than seventy-five deaths. |