On December 1, 1862, 39-year-old Phoebe Yates Pember became the chief matron of the Second Division at Chimborazo, which was one of five divisions in the hospital. Phoebe supervised 150 wards, and an estimated 15,000 soldiers were under her care during the Civil War. A complex of long, one-story whitewashed buildings sprawled atop a hill, the hospital began receiving patients in 1862 and was eventually expanded to 150 wards.Įach ward was a separate building, thirty feet wide and one hundred feet long, and housed approximately forty to sixty patients. Though Phoebe had no professional medical training, she believed that caring for her husband through years of illness qualified her for hospital work.Ĭhimborazo was said to be the largest military hospital in the world at that time. George Randolph, wife of the Confederate Secretary of War, offered Phoebe a position as a matron at the Chimborazo Hospital, a Confederate military hospital outside of Richmond, Virginia.
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