History of American Red Cross nursing - Tapa blanda

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1922 edition. Excerpt: ...possessed of an unusually winning personality. Frances B. Archer, Elmira W. Bears and Mary P. McCandlish were the other nurses. Mrs. Florence Lee Holtzman, of Washington, D. C, a laywoman of initiative and business acumen, first had charge of the financial details at the Chateau. By November 22 the nurses had cleaned the wards and set up rows of small white cribs in readiness for the arrival of ten children from Evian. Other detachments were soon sent in rapidly until there were seventy patients in the Chateau in February. The nursing staff, though reenforced by several aides, was limited and the heating facilities were very poor, so Dr. O'Neill did not dare for the time being to take a larger number of patients. The Chateau had some sixty rooms which were at first heated only by wood fires. The fall of snow around Lyons was heavier in the winter of 1917 and 1918 than it had been for forty years. "The enormously thick stone walls made the Chateau a veritable ice-box," wrote Dr. O'Neill, "and I have often wondered how those American nurses and aides stood the cold. Surely they must have suffered." The professional work at the Chateau des Ilalles differed very little from that at other hospitals of the Children's Bureau. Here were the same sick babies, the same thin, wistful young children to nurse and feed and bathe. "A depressing thing," wrote Dr. O'Neill, "was the inability or possibly fear of one child to play with another. The Boche rule had held them down so long that they would simply sit where they had been put until they were told to move." To be always hungry, to be sick and frightened, to have seen their parents, their brothers and sisters killed, to have watched their homes burn down with...