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
An Army Lady Superintendent is supposed to take charge of a ward
herself--generally the officers' ward; but I have not taken a ward yet,
as, until we fill up, there are enough sisters, and it seems more
profitable for me to go round supplying the sisters' needs from the
stores, looking after the cooking, and the house-boys, and the
washerwomen (I fear that my hair will turn grey in my efforts to keep
the typhoid linen separate), to say nothing of the cows, which are not a
success; and we have had to resort to frozen milk from
Australia--generally good, but sometimes there is a difficulty about
unfreezing it.
We have no Quartermaster here, and the man in charge of the stores is
quite unused to his job, so I have to see to a great many things with
which an Army Lady Superintendent has, as a rule, nothing to do.
I am very much afraid some of our orderlies will be getting typhoid; of
course they find it difficult to realise a danger they can't see, and
though we all lecture them about taking precautions, we are so busy
ourselves, that it is difficult to enforce them; and just at first there
were so many patients quite unconscious and with severe diarrhoea and
hæmorrhage, so that it meant constant changing of sheets, &c., by the
orderlies.
I think I told you some of the orderlies were ill when our first
patients (from the train accident) arrived; it proved to be a form of
dengue fever they had, and now the medical officers also are indulging
in it; it is rather like influenza--high fever for two or three days,
and then they are very weak and pulled down for a few more days. I only
hope the sisters will refrain from having it until the orderlies have
had a little more education: at present they are about as useful as an
average ward-maid at home, and the sisters have to act as sister, staff
nurse, and probationer too; but I don't want to grumble at them as they
are working well, anxious to learn, and very patient with the men (some
of them half delirious) who call "Orderly, orderly" all day long.
If they had had a few R.A.M.C. men amongst them, or even one or two
R.A.M.C. ward-masters, it would have been easier; as it is, there is not
a single man amongst them who knows anything of the usual routine in a
hospital, though they are well up in "First Aid" (for which we have no
use here).
The buildings are getting on, and we are ready for more patients as soon
as they can get a train to bring them down. We hear nothing of more
medical officers, sisters, or orderlies as yet.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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