Nurse Clara Maass, A Soldier's Story
Nurse Clara Maass, A Soldier's Story
Nurse Clara Maass was born on June 28, 1876, in East Orange, New Jersey. From an early age, she showed an instinctive calling toward caregiving, first working as a mother’s helper before pursuing formal training at the newly established Christina Trefz Training School for Nurses. In 1895, she graduated from its very first class, marking the beginning of a career defined by courage and service.
By 1898, Nurse Maass had risen to the position of head nurse at Newark German Hospital. Eager to broaden her experience and answer the growing national need created by the Spanish–American War, she volunteered as a contract nurse for the U.S. Army. That October, she was assigned to the Seventh Army Corps and served in field hospitals across Jacksonville, Florida; Savannah, Georgia; and Santiago, Cuba, where tropical disease was as deadly an enemy as armed conflict.
Nurse Maass later volunteered for service with the Eighth U.S. Army Corps and deployed to the Philippines. There, she contracted dengue fever in Manila, forcing her return to the United States to recover. By this point, she had already spent much of her young career treating patients afflicted with malaria, typhoid, dengue, and yellow fever, diseases that ravaged both military personnel and civilian populations throughout the Caribbean.
Because of her experience and resilience, Nurse Maass was approached by Captain William C. Gorgas to assist with Major Walter Reed’s Yellow Fever Commission. Assigned once more to Santiago, Cuba, she volunteered in March 1901 to participate in mosquito-borne transmission experiments designed to confirm the disease’s method of spread. After being bitten, she contracted a mild case of yellow fever and recovered.
Believing herself immune, Nurse Maass volunteered again on August 14, 1901, to demonstrate acquired resistance. Tragically, her earlier infection had not provided sufficient immunity. She developed yellow fever on August 18 and died six days later, on August 24, 1901, at just twenty-five years old.
Nurse Clara Maass was initially buried with full military honors in Santiago, Cuba, a rare and solemn recognition of her service. Her remains were later returned home, and she now rests at Fairmount Cemetery in Newark, New Jersey. Her sacrifice directly contributed to the proof that mosquitoes transmit yellow fever, a discovery that would save countless lives and reshape modern public health.
She stands today not only as a nurse and soldier, but as a quiet martyr to medical science, one who gave her life not in battle, but in the deliberate service of others.
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About the Author
a.d. elliott is a wanderer, photographer, and storyteller traveling through life
She shares her journeys at Take the Back Roads, explores new reads at Rite of Fancy, and highlights U.S. military biographies at Everyday Patriot.
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