Ellen La Motte

Ellen Newbold La Motte (1873–1961) was an American nurse, journalist and author. She is known for her book The Backwash of War in which she chronicled her experience as a nurse in World War I in an often bitter and cynical manner. She was also a leading practitioner in the treatment of tuberculosis and an advocate for addressing opium addiction in China.

Life and career La Motte was born in 1873 in Louisville to a relatively privileged family of French heritage. She began her nursing career as a tuberculosis nurse in Baltimore, Maryland, having graduated from Johns Hopkins Hospital in 1902. She recognised that effective treatment of the disease could only come from the separation of patients with tuberculosis from patients with other illnesses. She was also keen to delegate assessment and treatment of the patients to nurses rather than doctors.

In 1915, she volunteered as one of the first American war nurses to go to Europe and treat soldiers in World War I. She was encouraged to do so by her friend, the American author Gertrude Stein, who at the time lived in Paris. Fourteen of these vignettes were published in Atlantic Monthly, before being collectively published as The Backwash of War: The Human Wreckage of the Battlefield as Witnessed by an American Hospital Nurse in 1916. Despite early success, the brutal imagery was unpalatable and the book was suppressed. By 1917, it was banned by the American Government and was not republished until 1934. Researchers have speculated that Ernest Hemingway's influential unadorned style may have been influenced by La Motte's own writing, through Stein's mentoring.

La Motte took over Chadbourne's financial affairs in 1937 and earned over 1 million dollars on the stock market during the 1940s and '50s.

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