A Nurse's Life in War and PeaceLaurence, E. C. (Eleanor Constance)
History
A Nurse's Life in War and Peace
Laurence, E. C. (Eleanor Constance)
Military nursing; Nursing -- Great Britain; South African War, 1899-1902 -- Medical care
We had one very curious case. A young man was brought in unconscious one
afternoon about 2 P.M.; a little after five he got worse, and his
respiration suddenly stopped, the pulse went on steadily, so they did
artificial respiration; this went on till 9.30 P.M., and then they
decided to trephine, thinking it must be a cerebral tumour pressing on
the brain; of course no anæsthetic was necessary, as the poor man showed
no sign of life except that the pulse was beating; they could not find
any tumour, so he was put back to bed, and the men went on doing
artificial respiration all through the night in turns, until the pulse
suddenly stopped at 9.15 A.M., sixteen hours after the respiration had
ceased--a very strange case.
We often had rushing days, when it seemed impossible to make time for
meals, and scarcely time to breathe. I remember one day especially, when
we took in seven new cases, two of them, curiously enough, men from
quite different districts, who had both taken oxalic acid with a view
to suicide; one was an old man who was very bad for a day or two, and
then seemed to be getting better, but died suddenly one night from heart
failure; and the other was a poor young fellow of thirty, who had been
waiter in one shop for eight years, and was then turned off by a new
manager and replaced by a German lad. He had a wretched wife who drank,
and she took away his clothes and then disappeared; so we had to rig him
up in a suit when he went off; one of the other patients gave me five
shillings for him, and he asked me to keep it till he had been before
the magistrates, as he thought he would be sent to prison, but he came
back after his appearance in the police courts to tell me he had been
let off with a caution, and he thought his old master would take him
back; such a nice, quiet-mannered man, and most anxious to do anything
to help the nurses in their work, or to wait on the other patients, and
they all liked him.
The same day one of the house surgeons was admitted with a badly
poisoned arm, and a friend of one of the students with typhoid fever; he
had it very badly and caused us much anxiety, but pulled through all
right in the end.
After this spell in C. Ward I expected to return to my front surgery,
but instead I was offered in March (and gladly accepted) the post of
Night Sister, and that is what I have been doing ever since, except for
an interval for my summer holiday, and also for a few weeks when I took
charge of a large male medical ward while the sister had her holiday.
Being Night Sister here means plenty of running about, and plenty of
responsibility, but it also means better pay than Ward Sister, so that
suited me all right.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account