The Special-Diet Kitchen Work
Annie Wittenmyer describes the grave inadequacy of cooking in United States government hospitals during the war’s first two years, when untrained cooks served one general kitchen to the sick, wounded, dying, nurses, and convalescents. Donations from the North were often withheld from patients by surgeons or lost after being sent to the commissary, while only occasional small kitchens enabled women nurses to prepare suitable food for severely ill men. In December 1863, Wittenmyer conceived a system of special-diet kitchens. Ward surgeons prescribed each patient’s food on a bill of fare marked with permitted articles, allowing patients some expression of their own wishes. Ward-masters consolidated the orders, and special kitchens prepared the precise quantities required. Though managed separately, these kitchens remained under hospital authority. Ladies employed by surgeons supervised supplies and work, while disabled or convalescent soldiers commonly performed the cooking and other labor. In large hospitals, twenty-five to thirty men divided the work of feeding as many as fifteen hundred people three times daily. The first special-diet kitchen opened at Cumberland Hospital in Nashville, Tenn., with lumber and ranges supplied by the Christian Commission of Pittsburg, Pa. Mary E. Moorhead and Hannah Shaw took charge. Its striking results drew surgeons from Louisville to Chattanooga, many of whom came to inspect the reform themselves. Supported by the Christian Commission, Wittenmyer became superintendent of the work as it spread from Vicksburg to Petersburg. Surgeons agreed to employ her selected women and permit them to oversee supplies from the government and the Sanitary and Christian Commissions. The system gained endorsement from Mr. Lincoln, Secretary Stanton, Surgeon-General Barnes, and Assistant-Surgeon-General Wood. Barnes appointed army surgeons to examine the plan, and, after hearing Wittenmyer in Washington, D. C., they adopted it into the regular United States hospital system. Wittenmyer records nearly 900,000 rations issued in February 1865 from sixteen of more than one hundred kitchens she established. Their varied fare included drinks, breads, cereals, soups, meats, vegetables, puddings, fruit, and other delicacies, all issued only by surgical order. The variety served wounded men able to eat freely as well as homesick, hopelessly ill, and dying patients who craved familiar food. Women sought to offer home-like nourishment and words of cheer in place of absent loved ones. The system is credited with saving thousands of lives, issuing more than two million rations monthly during the war’s last eighteen months.
By Annie Wittenmyer · First published 1895 · Genre: Civil War History, Medical History, Memoir · 1,991 words
First lines
No part of the army service was so defective, during the first two years of the war, as the cooking department in the United States government hospitals.
Few of the men employed as cooks in these hospitals were trained or skilled; most of them had obtained their knowledge of cookery after being assigned to duty, under most unfavorable circumstances, and without the proper facilities for doing their work.
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Genres
- Civil War History — The work documents the development and operation of special-diet kitchens in United States military hospitals during the American Civil War, naming institutions, officials, locations, and wartime conditions.
- Medical History — Its central subject is hospital nutrition, patient recovery, surgical dietary prescriptions, and a reform incorporated into the federal military hospital system.
- Memoir — Wittenmyer writes in the first person about conceiving, organizing, supervising, and expanding the special-diet kitchen system.
- Social Reform — The narrative advocates and records a practical institutional reform intended to correct inadequate hospital food service and save wounded soldiers' lives.
Tags
American Civil War · Union military hospitals · 1860s United States · Civil War medicine · hospital food reform · special-diet kitchens · nutrition for wounded soldiers · nursing history · women's wartime service · female hospital administrators · Christian Commission · United States Sanitary Commission
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The Special-Diet Kitchen Work is listed on Textopian as a historical account by Annie Wittenmyer, dated 1895 CE.
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- Work type: Historical account
- Author: Annie Wittenmyer
- Date: 1895 CE
- Language: English
- Genres: Civil War History, Medical History, Memoir, Social Reform, Women's History
- Length: 1,991 words
- Structure: 1 section, 35 paragraphs
- Reading fit: Difficult (College Level)
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