Born: 9 November 1833, United States
Died: 25 July 1916
Country most active: United States
Also known as: NA
This biography is reprinted in full with permission from the National Women’s History Museum (United States of America). All rights reserved.
In the Confederacy, the most prominent nurses were Captain Sally Tompkins and Phoebe Pember. Tompkins was commissioned as an officer in the Confederate army so that she could have the power to commandeer supplies. She converted her Richmond mansion into Robertson Hospital and established a reputation for extraordinary quality: Tompkins’ hospital had by far the lowest death rate of any facility in the North or South, even though physicians sent their worst cases to her. Her staff of six—four of whom were black women still in slavery—treated more than 1,600 patients and lost only 73, an uncommonly low number in an era before germ theory was understood.