Transcriber's Notes
Welcome to the Project Gutenberg presentation of Hospital Sketches.
We used the 1863 version of the book for this transcription. A scanned copy of this book is available through Hathitrust, courtesy of Duke University.
We tried to preserve the original spelling of words, punctuation, and italics in the Sketches. Changes to the text are listed below, in the Detailed Notes. The Detailed Notes includes other issues that have come up during the transcription of the text. In addition, we have added some notes of explanation for some references in the text that, we hope, will help the reader.
The 1863 book was the first release of Hospital Sketches in book form. In 1869, the Sketches were combined with nearly three hundred pages of eight Camp and Fireside stories written by Miss Alcott.
Detailed Notes
Nurse Sarah Gamp, a character from the novel Martin Chuzzlewit by Charles Dickens, was a stereotype of untrained and incompeteurses of the early Victorian era, before the reforms of Florence Nightingale.
On page 7, changed three page numbers in the Table of Contents: 10 to 9, 64 to 66, and 84 to 86.
On page 12, Change never-come to never come in "If I never-come back, make a bonfire of them."
On page 14, being between Scylla and Charybdis is an idiom deriving from Greek mythology, meaning "having to choose between two evils".
On page 14, the Massachusetts governor in 1862 was John Albion Andrew.
On page 16, change Milk street to Milk Street in the clause "and bore down upon Milk street." This matches the spelling of two other references to Milk Street in the Sketches.
Even today, the Koh-i-noor diamond mentioned on page 16 is considered the most valuable diamond in the world.
On page 21, change Perewinkle to Periwinkle in the clause "Nurse Perewinkle does exist."
On page 27, the Baltimore riot of April 19, 1861 was a civil conflict between Confederate sympathizers against members of out-of-state militia (primarily Massachusetts and some Pennsylvania men). The incident is called "The First Bloodshed of the Civil War."
On page 34 transcribe door-ways with the hyphen, because the hyphen is found in door-step, door-handles, and door-mat.
On page 42 add period after comfortable in the clause: "was immensely cheering and comfortable."
On page 54, remove period after My in "My. Ganymede departed."
On page 61, add comma after moment in the sentence: He seemed a little startled at first, pondered over the fateful fact a moment then shook his head, with a glance at the broad chest and muscular limbs stretched out before him:
On page 75, Henry Wilson was the Senator from Massachusetts from 1855-1873.
On page 75, Preston Brooks beat Massachusetts senator Charles Sumner with a cane on March 22, 1856, in retribution for an anti-Kansas speech by Sumner that attacked Andrew Butler, a relative of Brooks.
On page 77, Florence Nightingale ran the first group of organized female nurses to support the British Army in the Crimean War.
On page 79, Mark Tapley was a beloved character created by Charles Dickens in his novel The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit.
On page 82, Aunt Chloe was a character from Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe.
On Page 82-83, New Year's Day in 1863 was celebrated by abolitionists because Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation took effect on that day.
On Page 83, cosy is a variant of cozy, and we preserved this as it appeared in the original Sketches. The author did use cozy on page 47 and page 100.
On page 89, transcribe Ward-master with the hyphen. The book typically used 'ward master.'
On page 93, three characters from the novels of Charles Dickens are mentioned: a) Mrs. Cluppins from The Pickwick Papers, b) Chadband, a pompous preacher from Bleak House, and c) Sam Weller from The Pickwick Papers.
On page 95, change "good by" to "good bye."
On page 96, changed "waved hier hands" to "waved their hands."
Four times in Chapter 6, the author omitted the hyphen in Hurly-burly House after using the hyphen with references to Hurly-burly House and Hurly-burly Hotel in previous Chapters. Those four times occurred on Page 90, Page 99 (twice) and Page 101. We added the hyphen to the four items in Chapter 6.