The American Red Cross

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses how, in 1881, Clara Barton proposed the establishment of the American Red Cross, based on the revolutionary model of the International Red Cross that was already operating in Europe, where the organization would not only assist military hospitals during times of war but also help during peacetime with disaster relief and health and safety education of the general public. The author points out that before World War I, the Red Cross mainly served to promote first aid, water safety and public health nursing programs in the United States; however, after the outbreak of war and the pandemic influenza outbreak, the size of the organization exploded from 107 local chapters in 1914 to 3,864 in 1918. The paper relates that the organization has evolved into an advocate of humanitarianism, even criticizing its own government although the Red Cross itself has not avoided its own scandals.

From the Paper:

"The Red Cross is an organization that grew out of the suffering of the wars of the nineteenth century. In 1863, Henri Dunant, a Swiss businessman, published "A Memory of Solferino", a memoir about his time in the northern Italian battlefield of Solferino. The book dealt with how war affected the lives of both the combatants and civilians. This memoir inspired the founding of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in 1864. This committee was lead by Jean-Henry Dunant, who would win the first Nobel Peach Prize in 1901 for founding the Red Cross. The first committee was made up of representatives from eleven countries. Their purpose was to lessen the suffering that came from war and they recommended that every country have its own committee that was endowed with enough influence to effectively cooperate in times of war with the hospital services of the battling armies."

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