author
Ellen N. (Ellen Newbold) La Motte
1873–1961
A sharp-eyed nurse, journalist, and reformer, she wrote about war and public health with unusual honesty. Her best-known book, The Backwash of War, brought readers close to the brutal realities of World War I and stood apart from more heroic accounts of the conflict.
5 Audiobooks
Peking Dust
by Ellen N. (Ellen Newbold) La Motte
The Backwash of War The Human Wreckage of the Battlefield as Witnessed by an American Hospital Nurse
by Ellen N. (Ellen Newbold) La Motte
Civilization: Tales of the Orient
by Ellen N. (Ellen Newbold) La Motte
The Tuberculosis Nurse: Her Function and Her Qualifications A Handbook for Practical Workers in the Tuberculosis Campaign
by Ellen N. (Ellen Newbold) La Motte
The Opium Monopoly
by Ellen N. (Ellen Newbold) La Motte
About the author
Born in 1873, she trained as a nurse at Johns Hopkins and became known early for her work in tuberculosis care. She later expanded her writing beyond nursing, building a career as an author and journalist interested in social reform as well as public health.
Her most famous book, The Backwash of War (1916), drew on her experience as a nurse near the Western Front in World War I. Rather than celebrating battle, the book focused on suffering, exhaustion, and the human wreckage left behind, which gave it a strikingly modern, antiwar tone.
She also wrote about the opium trade in Asia and is remembered as both a medical professional and an unsparing observer of the world around her. That mix of firsthand experience, moral urgency, and plainspoken style gives her work its lasting force.