Typhoid Fever
It was but a month into her work at Union Hotel Hospital that Louisa fell ill with typhoid fever. Writing that her “head felt like a cannon ball; my feet had a tendency to cleave to the floor; the walls at times undulated in a most disagreeable manner,” Louisa had succumbed to a very dangerous illness. Historians recognize that disease was the likeliest cause of death for nurses, doctors, and other relief workers (as it was for soldiers) in the Civil War. In fact, Hannah Ropes, the supervisor of nurses at Union Hotel Hospital died from typhoid fever at the same time Louisa was ill.[24]
A Victim of Medicine Not Disease
Due to her illness, Louisa became a patient of the hospital where she had worked so hard to care for sick and wounded soldiers. She was cared for by hospital staff, nurses including African American nurse Matilda Cleaver John, and doctors. The treatment for typhoid at the time was based on the theory that “the less material there was in the body, the less progress a disease could make.” As a result, Louisa was given laxatives followed by calomel, another purgative medicine. Calomel was a compound made of mercury and was given in large doses until a patient salivated (which actually was a sign of severe mercury poisoning). According to historian Susan Cheever, “Louisa was a victim of medicine not of disease.” The effects of her mercury poisoning would last long after her typhoid fever would pass and the consequences of Louisa’s illness and treatment would last her entire life. In hopes of saving Louisa’s life, on the doctors’ urges, Mrs. Ropes wrote to the Alcott family asking someone to come to take her home. Louisa barely recognized her father, Bronson Alcott, when he arrived. Dorothea Dix saw Louisa off at the train station, and Louisa arrived at her family home in a very poor state; her near death condition and delirium would last for three weeks.[25]