This Day in History: Anita Newcomb McGee, Founder Army Nurse Corps

On this day in 1864, the future Anita Newcomb McGee is born. She’s been called the “Founder of the Army Nurse Corps” because of her work in establishing military nursing at the turn of the century.

McGee was Anita Rosalie Newcomb at birth, the daughter of two respected academics. Her parents both valued education and ensured that Anita got the best schooling available to a young girl in that day and age.

She even studied abroad at one point.

Anita was a researcher, a writer, and a published author when she got married to a geologist, Dr. W.J. McGee in 1888.  She went to medical school, with his support, graduating from Columbian College (now George Washington University) with her medical degree in 1892.

It was an unusual accomplishment for a young woman in the late 1800s, of course, but then she took it a step further: She pursued postgraduate study at the School of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University.

Remember, she wasn’t “supposed to” be doing any of these things in the late 1800s.

Anita was briefly a doctor in private practice before retiring to a life of research. She presumably expected to live out her days researching and writing (which she loved), but life took an unexpected twist.

It all started because she’d been a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution, serving in roles such as Historian-General and Vice President-General. It was 1898, and war with Spain was looming. Could DAR help the Army with its medical needs?

The Army had not been using nurses at base hospitals for several decades, but Anita learned that the Army’s Surgeon General was thinking of using them again. Through his wife, who was a member of DAR, she got in touch with him. She’d already been working toward a DAR Hospital Corps of nurses, ready to help if war were to break out.

Could the two work together?

Only fully qualified nurses should serve, she argued. DAR could help sift through applications and identify the most skilled candidates. In the end, her proposal was accepted. Along with two assistants, she worked her way through 5,000 applications, finding the best women to serve in a corps of nurses.

“Dr. McGee’s insistence upon accepting only hospital-trained, and well-referenced nurses,” the AMEDD Center of History & Heritage explains, “placed stringent limitations on the number of nurses eligible to serve in the Corps. At the same time, it established a standard for safe, skilled nursing practice. Within slightly over two weeks, 1200 nurses were on duty in the Army.”

Her efforts were so impressive that she was appointed an Acting Assistant Surgeon in the U.S. Army. In that capacity, she would oversee the nurses and their staffing.

You won’t be surprised to hear that the nurses were quite a help to our boys.

“When you were coming,” one Army surgeon concluded, “we did not know what we would do with you. Now we do not know what we would have done without you.”

After the war, Anita focused on establishing a more permanent nurse corps in the Army. At the request of the Surgeon General, she ultimately drafted a section in the Army Reorganization Act of 1901 that established the Army Nurse Corps. That legislation required the head of the Nurse Corps to be a graduate nurse, so Dr. Anita McGee was forced to resign at the end of 1900.

The Army Nurse Corps will celebrate its 125th anniversary next February. Anita will doubtless again be celebrated for her part in its creation.

McGee did more than just found the Army Nurse Corps, of course. She later organized the Society of Spanish-American War Nurses, and she led an American volunteer effort to help the Japanese during the Russo-Japanese War.

Naturally, those are stories for another day.

    Enjoyed this post? More stories of American

heroines can be found on my website, here. 

Primary Sources:

• A Look Back - November/December 2014 (Daughters of the American Revolution)

• American Angels of Mercy: Dr. Anita Newcomb McGee's Pictorial Record of the Russo-Japanese War, 1904 (National Museum of Health and Medicine)

• Bethanne Kelly Patrick, How Founder of Army Nurse Corps Became a Trailblazer: Dr. Anita Newcomb McGee (Military.com; Sept. 6, 2017)

• Biographies: Anita Newcomb McGee (National Museum of the United States Army)

• Dr. Anita Newcomb McGee (U.S. National Library of Medicine)

• Dr. Anita Newcomb McGee: Founder of the Army Nurse Corps (AMEDD Center of History & Heritage)

• Lynn Young, Celebrate 125! Monday: Dr. Anita Newcomb McGee (Daughters of the American Revolution; Nov. 9, 2015)