Celebrities Who Began Their Career As Nurses

Walt Whitman is the poet who gave us Leaves of Grass, and was also a first-class teacher, journalist, and editor. Whitman left New York to become the editor of the New Orleans Crescent, just before the Civil War. Whitman did not like the slavery he saw in New Orleans, so he returned to New York to write against it. At the outbreak of the Civil War, Whitman worked as a freelance journalist and a nurse to his injured brother and other Union soldiers.

Photo source: The US National Archives