Queasy Street.

Hi Chastity Lowell,

There was nothing subtle about war or stories from Civil War nurses they based the series on. The episode didn't begin to show just how brutal 19th Century surgery was. It was filthy, disgusting and rank, the surgeons often stripped to the waist, the surgical tools encrusted with blood and pus.

The producers worked with a medical historian who showed the actors the actual surgical techniques. Regarding the stories, they based the series on actual letters and diaries from the nurses who worked at the Union hospital. Since the hospital was located in the South, I didn't think she was in danger from wounded soldiers.

The production used some great Broadway actors - It blew me away to see Cherry Jones as Dix along with other Tony winners. I do wish they'd used Jones more.

Perhaps Mercy Street just isn't your cup of tea - nothing wrong with that.

I liked her too.

But, they did screw up some of the social norms of the times. Emma would NEVER have been allowed in that hospital. She is unmarried. Only matrons were allowed to tend the sick and wounded in the hospitals. The unmarried girls were allowed to tend the recuperating soldiers but not the ones in the hospitals. And she would have NEVER been allowed to go unescorted through the streets. She would have been escorted by a servant or one of her male relatives. This was Virginia, after all. Even a matron would have been escorted by a servant. Mary Finney would have been different. She was a Bostonian. But Emma was a nice Southern girl. There is no way she would have walked the streets of Alexandria alone. And the doctor would have never been allowed to talk to Emma in such a familiar way. The black orderly wouldn't have been so easily familiar with Mary. It just seems that the producers and director didn't do enough research on the social norms of the times.

haha, that was funny. Made me laugh. I like this board, might have to watch the damn show now.

Hi ChastityLowell,

There were several reason for infection, lack of sanitation and plumbing, the need for antisepsis was not discovered until around 1871 and Lister, antibiotics not in general use until the 1950s. Also, bullets were lead. to be honest, it's surprising there wasn't even more death.

I feel like they're never going to be able to fully embrace the horror in a 6-episode, 55-minute-per-episode show. It goes too quickly, so yeah, there will always be conversations squashed in.

I don't like it as much as the first seasons of Downton. I like it as much as the later seasons because I feel like Downton has downgraded of late. It's become less of a "Masterpiece" and more of a soap that people don't recognize as a soap because of the British accents and fancy settings. There are only so many things that can happen to these people before it gets sort of hokey. With Mercy Street, at least, with a war hospital setting, there is something BIG happening, so we're not supposed to worry about whether some rich lady loses control over the hospital or some rich guy can't have as many footmen. Here, it's a matter of life and death, so that's more important to start with. I think it has potential.

I haven't watched Call the Midwife, so I can't comment on the comparison. My mom likes it. There are only so many serials I can watch at once!

One BBC show I really liked, which didn't make it to PBS but was shown on BBC America last year was Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. You'd probably like it. Don't know if you can find it on Netflix or somewhere. It was a 7-part serial. It was based upon a book, so there aren't plans for a second series, as the series ended as the book ended.

"Arguing with trolls is like playing chess with a pigeon . . . ."

ChastityLowell,

I understand your feelings on this drama. May I add to this discussion?

Yes, Mary Phinney would be unprepared for the experiences in a wartime hospital. Which makes me ask why Dorothy Dix made her head nurse? Especially when she had Miss Hastings, a nurse who had experienced wartime hospital care with Florence Nightengale in the Crimea.

This is a military hospital behind the lines. Any surgery here would be secondary. That is, amputating a limb because is has turned gangrene. As was posted by others, limbs were amputated because the minie ball/bullet shattered the bone and there was no way to save the arm or leg. But these amputations would have occurred at field hospitals near the battle. Alexandria, Virginia, was no where the battlefield at any time during the war. The characters keep talking about the Peninsula. This places the series in the late spring/early summer of 1862. The fighting occurred in southern Virginia, and the wounded, after treatment at field hospitals, were sent north by hospital ship to hospitals in Washington, Philadelphia, and New York. All surgeries and amputations at this hospital would be secondary -- due to infection or gangrene. An amputation due to a shattered bone would already have been performed at a field hospital.

Yes, the area seems cramped, but that is how it was early in the war. Hotels and office buildings (the U.S. Patent Office, for example) were converted into hospitals. While they served their original purposes, they were cramped when it came to hospital duty. After the time period of the series, more open, pavilion hospitals were built.

Yes, the hospital would have smelled horrific! Unwashed men, infected wounds, bad food -- all contributed to the stench of the hospital.

I apologize for such a long post. Please permit me to close by saying that I have been a Civil War re-enactor for over twenty years, most of it as a civilian contract surgeon, and that I have a Masters Degree in History with a concentration in American Civil War Studies.