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Balm of Hope: Charity Afire Impels Daughters of Charity to Civil War Nursing ed. by Betty Ann McNeil, D.C. (review)

Jane Austen once wrote, “. . . Real solemn history, I cannot be interested in. . . . The quarrels of popes and kings, with wars and pestilences in every page; the men all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all.”1 Those as disinterested in military history as Austen was or bewildered in the search for historical accounts of war that focus on women and the good that can come from such acts of violence will welcome this book. Balm of Hope: Charity Afire Impels Daughters of Charity to Civil War Nursing is a compilation of military hospital notes, “recollections and accounts,” and correspondence that detail the service of the American Daughters of Charity of Vincent de Paul, women whose lives were dedicated to charity and who achieved the trusted sociocultural position of being able to provide spiritual and physical comfort and care for Union and Confederate soldiers alike. It is edited by Sister Betty Ann McNeil, archivist of the order, who also assisted this reviewer with a book about the nurses among the confraternity of the Daughters of Charity. The American Daughters’ contributions during the War Between the States were ones of diplomacy and kindness defined as the “remedy of remedies” by Sister Matilda Coskery in her 1840s book, Advices on the Care of the Sick.