The makeshift hospital of Whitman's poem had formerly been

The makeshift hospital had formerly been private buildings and churches that opened their doors for emergencies for the military sick and wounded soldiers. Examples of the converted makeshift hospitals include Ascension, Epiphany, Methodist Episcopal churches in Wahington. The hospitals had an average of five hundred beds, the buildings were not well ventilated and had poor sanitation resulting to typhoid, dysentery and malarial fevers as leading diseases of the war.