Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands

Summary

Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands is the lively autobiography of a Jamaican doctress, nurse and businesswoman. Mary Seacole begins in Kingston, where she was born to a Scottish soldier and a Creole mother who kept a boarding house and was famous for her cures; she declines to give the year, saying only that she and the century were young together. As a girl she doctors her doll, then the household cats and dogs, then people. She makes trading voyages to London, the Bahamas, Haiti and Cuba, marries Mr. Seacole, nurses him until his death, loses her mother, and keeps the boarding house herself, nursing officers and their families through the cholera of 1850. She then follows her brother to the Isthmus of Panama, crowded with travellers bound for the California gold fields. At Cruces cholera breaks out, and she becomes the yellow doctress who treats the sick when there is no one else; after a baby dies in her arms, she examines the body to learn more about the disease, and she catches cholera herself. She keeps a hotel at Cruces and later at Gorgona, describes gamblers, floods, fires and thieves, returns to Jamaica to nurse yellow fever patients in 1853, and tries her luck at a gold-prospecting venture at Escribanos. When the Crimean War begins she sails to London to offer herself as an army nurse, but the War Office, the Crimean Fund and Florence Nightingale's recruiters turn her away. Undaunted, she forms a partnership with Thomas Day, her associate from the Panama gold venture, and sails at her own cost. She spends a night at Scutari after meeting Miss Nightingale, then lands at Balaclava, sells stores from a ship, and builds the British Hotel at Spring Hill, a store, canteen and kitchen where soldiers could buy food and comforts and where she treated the sick. She describes rats and thieves, her customers, Alexis Soyer, the failed assault on the Redan on 18 June 1855, the Battle of the Tchernaya, the fall of Sebastopol, and her care for wounded men of every army, including Russians, on the field. Peace leaves her with unsold stock and bankruptcy, but she closes cheerfully, saying that friends from the Crimea greet her everywhere in London and that she would not trade them for riches. The book was published in London by James Blackwood in July 1857, edited by an unidentified W. J. S., with a preface by W. H. Russell, the Times correspondent in the Crimea, and a dedication to Lord Rokeby; the library text is the complete 1857 edition.

Top Lessons

• Turning a refusal into a road

  In London Seacole is turned away by every office she tries, and she weeps and prays in the street. The next morning she decides to go to the Crimea at her own cost and builds a business that lets her serve. The book shows a closed door becoming the start of a different path.

• Skill learned by watching and doing

  Seacole learns medicine from her mother, practises on her doll and pets, and gains experience in cholera and yellow fever epidemics. She is proud of her skill but also quick to praise the overworked army doctors whom she wished to help. Her story honours practical knowledge built over a lifetime.

• Mercy that crosses battle lines

  After the Battle of the Tchernaya Seacole dresses the wounds of French, Sardinian and Russian soldiers as well as British ones, and she is bitten by a dying Russian whose pain she was trying to ease. She records the thanks given in the one common language of smiles. Her care follows need rather than nationality.

• Counting gains that are not money

  Seacole returns from the war bankrupt and in poorer health, yet she says she cannot feel ashamed, because everywhere in London she meets friends from Spring Hill. She asks whether she would have gained such friendship if she had come home rich. The conclusion invites readers to weigh what makes a life rich.

Verified Quotes

Medical Lens

Seacole's memoir is a primary source for Caribbean Creole medicine and for lay nursing in mid-nineteenth-century epidemics and war. She learned from her mother, a Kingston doctress, and describes treating cholera in Jamaica (1850) and at Cruces on the Isthmus of Panama (1851) with mustard emetics and plasters, warm fomentations, calomel and sugar of lead (lead acetate, then a standard astringent), remedies that reflect the medicine of the period and that later practice abandoned; she candidly notes that many patients died. After an infant patient dies of cholera she persuades the gravedigger to let her examine the body, an informal post-mortem she calls her first and last, undertaken to understand the disease. She nursed yellow fever cases in Kingston in 1853 and caught cholera herself. In the Crimea she sold food and sick-comforts and treated soldiers for the camp sicknesses she knew from the Caribbean, prints testimonials from army surgeons, and on the battlefield dressed wounds, gave water and helped load ambulances; she dislocated her thumb under fire and was bitten by a dying Russian soldier. Her account complements the official and Nightingale-centred histories of Crimean medicine with the view of an independent practitioner; how to characterize her role, as nurse, doctress or sutler who also nursed, is discussed by historians.

• Chapter I

  Childhood practice of medicine on her doll and pets, learned by watching her mother's patients.

• Chapter IV

  Cholera at Cruces: her treatments, the deaths, the examination of an infant's body to learn about the disease, and her own attack of cholera.

• Chapter VII

  Nursing army officers and their families through the yellow fever epidemic in Kingston in 1853, with many death-bed scenes.

• Chapter IX

  A visit to the Barrack Hospital at Scutari and her meeting with Florence Nightingale.

• Chapter XIII

  Her medical work among the troops from the British Hotel, with testimonials from army surgeons.

• Chapter XVI

  Dressing wounds at the field hospital on 18 June 1855 and on the field of the Tchernaya.