[Rarebooks] FS: The Only Woman to Receive the Medal of Honor & Advocate of Dress Reform for Women, 1871

[Charles Agvent]

WALKER, Dr. Mary E. HIT. New York: The American News Company, (1871). 
First Edition. Publisher's red cloth stamped in black on the covers with 
gilt lettering and decorations on the spine. Illustrated with a 
frontispiece portrait of the author wearing pants, tissue guard present. 
A scarce book by this abolitionist, prohibitionist, prisoner of war, and 
surgeon, the only woman to ever receive the Medal of Honor. After 
earning a medical degree from New York's Syracuse Medical College in 
1855, Walker volunteered with the Union Army at the outbreak of the 
Civil War. She was captured by Confederate forces after crossing enemy 
lines to treat wounded civilians and arrested as a spy, ultimately being 
released in an exchange of prisoners. After the war, she received the 
Congressional Medal of Honor for her efforts to treat the wounded, the 
only military decoration given to anyone for service during the Civil 
War. Walker is the only woman to receive the medal and one of only eight 
civilians to receive it. After the war, she wrote and lectured 
supporting the women's suffrage movement until her death in 1919. One of 
Walker's strongest efforts was in dress reform for women believing that 
long skirts and petticoats contributed to ill health, unnecessary 
expense, and even divorce. She was frequently arrested for wearing men's 
clothing, insisting "I don't wear men's clothes, I wear my own clothes." 
One of the eight chapters in this book is on Dress Reform. Others are 
Love and Marriage, Tobacco, Temperance, Women's Franchise, Divorce, 
Labor, and Religion. Slight losses of cloth on the edges with greater 
loss along the spine edges, likely due to worming; covers tight and 
firm. Very Good. (#020439)        $3,500

https://www.charlesagvent.com/pages/books/020439/dr-mary-e-walker/hit

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