Clara Maass

Clara Louise Maass (June 28, 1876 – August 24, 1901) was an American nurse who died as a result of volunteering for medical experiments to study yellow fever.

Early life Clara Louise Maass was born in East Orange, New Jersey, to German immigrants Hedwig and Robert Maass. She was the oldest of ten children in a devout Lutheran family. Clara's family was impoverished and to help alleviate the financial burden of one child on her family, she went to work as a "mother's helper" for a local woman while finishing high school after her family had failed in the farming industry. Her father had become a hatter and opened up a small grocery store to try to bring in more revenue. While she did not generate any income as a helper, she was still able to live and eat with her employer's family. Then at the age of 15, she began working at the Newark Orphan Asylum, and two years later, at the age of 17, Maass started nursing school at the Christina Trefz Training School for Nurses after being influenced by Florence Nightingale.

In 1895, she became one of the first graduates of Newark German Hospital's Christina Trefz Training School for Nurses. By 1898, she had been promoted to head nurse at Newark German Hospital, where she was known for her hard work and dedication to her profession.

During her service with the military, she saw few battle injuries. Instead, most of her nursing duties came in providing medical aid to soldiers suffering from infectious diseases like typhoid, malaria, dengue and yellow fever. She contracted dengue in Manila, and was sent home.

Yellow fever studies The number one cause of death during the Spanish-American war was typhoid fever, which accounted for 87 percent of deaths from disease in the national encampments. Yellow fever was also a problem in soldiers during the Spanish-American war, along with malaria, surpassing death on the battlefield and battle wounds.

Shortly after finishing her second assignment with the army, Maass returned to Cuba in October 1900 after being summoned by William C. Gorgas, who was working with the U.S. Army's Yellow Fever Commission. The commission, headed by Major Walter Reed, was established during the post-war occupation of Cuba to investigate yellow fever, which was endemic in Cuba. One of its goals was to determine if the disease was spread through mosquito bites or by contact with contaminated objects. Sensationalized newspaper headlines portrayed her death as the result of financial desperation ("Sold Her Life for $100”) or the need to help her mother. Eleanor Krohn Herrmann argues that her reasons were fundamentally humanitarian, citing her knowledge of the severity of the disease and her lifelong desire to alleviate the suffering of others. and also the first to have a hospital named after them. The Calendar of Saints of the Lutheran Church honors Maass and British nurse Florence Nightingale on August 13 as a "Renewer of Society." She was presented posthumously with the NSDAR Women in American History Award in May of 2024. The award is archived in the Spanish-American War Collection at the Jacksonville (FL) Public Library at the Main Downtown branch. During the Spanish American War, she served at the tent hospital Camp Cuba Libre in Jacksonville, FL from October 1, 1898 to February 5, 1899.