She Came to Slay by Erica Armstrong Dunbar

Author:Erica Armstrong Dunbar
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2019-11-04T16:00:00+00:00

SICK AND TIRED

She gained this trust by performing some of the most important work among the soldiers and the freedmen: she was drafted to nurse the sick and console the dying. Harriet was assigned to work with Dr. Henry K. Durant, a physician and medical director of the freedmen’s hospital at Port Royal, where she witnessed unimaginable suffering. More men would die of disease than bullets during the war, as yellow fever and cholera turned healthy men into mere shadows of themselves. Dysentery wreaked havoc on the intestines of men who languished in unsanitary conditions, as flies, feces, and food carried germs that wiped out entire regiments and caused devastation among the civilian population.

There were only a handful of available medications that treated diseases, so the sick depended upon botanical concoctions. Harriet would have collected blackberries and brewed chamomile tea to soothe inflamed bowels. She also remembered that paregoric, which she used to drug fugitive babies, served as an antidiarrheal. Appreciated for her knowledge of herbal remedies, Harriet continued to gain the trust and admiration of the freedmen and freedwomen around the camp. Among the formerly enslaved, her knowledge carried more weight than the advice of Dr. Durant. She was well known for her Underground leadership, but in the camps, she became legendary for her medical care.

Tubman, a Union Nurse Caring for the Sick and Dying

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