A Story of the Red Cross; Glimpses of Field Work — John Shaqi
A Story of the Red Cross; Glimpses of Field WorkBarton, Clara
History
A Story of the Red Cross; Glimpses of Field Work
Barton, Clara
American National Red Cross
This was all. We assisted their relief committee to arrange for the
receipt and distribution of funds, sent for experienced helpers to take
charge of supplies, to distribute clothing, and aid the hospital
service. We remained two weeks, and left them with more supplies than
they knew how to distribute, and the Citizens' Committee, with
accumulating cash in its treasury of ninety thousand dollars, full of
hope, life, and a gratitude they could not speak.
As in the Texas famine, we paid our own expenses and no dollar but our
own had passed our hands. We were only glad to do this, in the hope that
we were building up an institution of self-help of the people, that
would one day win its way to their favor and aid.
III
YELLOW FEVER IN FLORIDA
During the same year the yellow fever broke out in Jacksonville, Fla.,
and was declared epidemic in September.
An arrangement had been made between the National Association and the
Auxiliary Society of the Red Cross of New Orleans, which society
embraced the famous old "Howard Association," that, in case of an
outbreak of yellow fever, they would send their immune nurses from the
South, and we of the North would supply the money to support and pay
them.
This arrangement was carried out so far as could be, under the very
natural differences of a medical department of active, professional men,
taking up the treatment of an epidemic of which they knew very little
experimentally, but filled with the enthusiasm of science and hope, and
the unprofessional, fearless, easy-going gait of the old Southern
nurses, white and black, whose whole lives had been spent in just that
work.
The Red Cross sent no Northern nurses. But eighteen or twenty "Howard
nurses," mainly colored, went out from New Orleans under charge of Col.
Fred. F. Southmayd, their leader of twenty years in epidemics. A part of
his nurses were stationed at Macclenny, and a part went on to
Jacksonville. Under medical direction of their noted "yellow fever
doctor"--a tall Norwegian--Dr. Gill, they did their faithful work and
won their meed of grateful praise.
Our place was in Washington, to receive, deal carefully with, and hold
back the tide of offered service from the hundreds of enthusiastic,
excited untrained volunteers, rushing on to danger and death. Their
fearless ignorance was a pitiful lesson. In all the hundreds there was
scarcely one who had ever seen a case of yellow fever, but all were sure
they were proof against it. Only three passed us, and two of these had
the fever in Jacksonville.
When the scourge was ended we met our nurses personally at Camp Perry,
paid and sent them back to New Orleans. All that are living are at our
service still, faithful and true.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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