Nursing Corps

The U.S. Army Nurse Corps, which traces its history to the second Continental Congress in 1775. At the end of the Revolutionary War, nurses disappeared from military rolls until the Civil War when the Secretary of War appointed Dorothea Lynde Dix as Superintendent of Women Nurses in the Union Army in 1861. In 1887, Congress authorized the establishment of the Hospital Corps, comprised of enlisted men, but the Hospital Corps proved inadequate during the Spanish-American War (1898) when epidemics of typhoid and other tropical diseases swept through the armed forces. The Surgeon General then appointed Dr. Anita Newcomb McGee as Assistant Attorney General and charged her with establishing criteria for choosing nurses for the U.S. Army. In 1901, the Army Recognition Act established a permanent Nurses Corps. At the beginning of World War I there were 403 nurses on active duty; by the end of the war, approximately 22, 000 nurses had served. Following the end of World War II, in 1947, the Army Nurse Corps was established as a component of the Department of the U.S. Army.

The Navy Nurse Corps was established in 1908 by the U.S. Congress.

See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.