Mary Phinney von Olnhausen

Baroness Mary Phinney von Olnhausen (1818 to 1902) was an American nurse, abolitionist and diarist. She served as an army nurse, and her diaries were later extracted in the book Adventures of an Army Nurse in Two Wars, edited by her nephew James Phinney Munroe. Historians turn to that book to understand the medical techniques of the Civil War, which makes her account a firsthand record of how wounded soldiers were treated in military hospitals of the period, written by a nurse who was also committed to the cause of abolition.