From handmaiden to right hand--World War I--the mud and the blood.

By the beginning of World War I, modern innovations and advances in the field of medicine were common. Physicians knew about bacteria, how disease spread, and the importance of antisepsis. To prepare for the war, Great Britain developed elite corps of army nurses, fully-equipped military hospitals, and trained personnel who established field hospitals and base hospitals. Alice Fitzgerald, a nurse from Baltimore, was drawn into the conflict when she was asked to serve as the Edith Cavell Memorial Nurse with the British Army.