World War, 1914-1918 -- Hospitals; World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives
In the afternoon we almost always had some distinguished
visitor to entertain, and it is one of my chief regrets that we
never kept a visitors' book. Its pages would one day have been
of the greatest interest. Twice every week the Queen of the
Belgians came round our wards. She came quite simply, with
one of her ladies and one of the Belgian medical officers, and
no one could possibly have taken a deeper interest in the
patients. Her father studied medicine as a hobby, and had,
indeed, become a very distinguished physician, and she herself
has had considerable training in medicine, so that her interest
was a great deal more than that of an ordinary lay visitor. She
was quite able to criticize and to appreciate details of nursing
and of treatment. She always spoke to every patient, and she
had a kind word for every one of them, Belgian, French, or even
German, for we had a few Germans. There was something deeply
touching in the scene. The dimly lit ward, with its crude furniture,
the slim figure in black, bending in compassion over the rough
fellows who would gladly have given their lives for her, and
who now lay wounded in the cause in which she herself had
suffered. The Germans may destroy Belgium, but they will never
destroy the kingdom of its Queen. Sometimes the King came
to see his soldiers--a tall, silent man, with the face of one who
has suffered much, and as simple, as gentle, and as kindly as
his Queen. It was good to see the faces light up as he entered
a ward, to see heads painfully raised to gaze after no splendid
uniform, but a man.
One of our most distinguished and most welcome visitors was
Madame Curie, the discoverer of radium. She brought her large
X-ray equipment to Furnes for work amongst the wounded, and
we persuaded her to stay with us for a week. One of our
storerooms was rapidly fitted up as an impromptu radiographic
department, the windows painted over and covered with thick
paper, a stove introduced, and a dark-room contrived with the
aid of a cupboard and two curtains. Electric current was
obtained from a dynamo bolted on to the step of a twenty-horse-power
car, and driven by a belt from the flywheel of the engine. The
car stood out in the courtyard and snorted away, whilst we
worked in the storeroom alongside. The coil and mercury
break were combined in one piece, and the whole apparatus
was skilfully contrived with a view to portability. Madame Curie
was an indefatigable worker, and in a very short time had taken
radiographs of all the cases which we could place at her
disposal, and, indeed, we ransacked all the hospitals in Furnes,
for when they heard of her arrival, they were only too glad to
make use of the opportunity. Mademoiselle Curie developed
the plates, and between them they produced photographs of
the greatest utility to us.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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