June 2, 1918
Mount Sinai Tr. School
Madison Ave & 101 St.
New York City - N.Y.My dear Miss Turner -
Mount Holyoke's campus must be beautiful this late June afternoon. I wish that I mgiht be with you at a "campus sing" but, this Spring at least, my songs must be sung over the red and yellow housetops of New York City. In spite of the fact that the air is heavy with the odour of people and sun-baked bricks, and noisy with street cars and street urchins my song is a happy one - with the words "Sometimes the Light surprises the Christian while he sings" Miss Turner I really believe that, even in the midst of this terrible war, there are seasons of clear shining.
In the first place I am going to graduate March 15 - 1919 instead of Sept. 1919 - The six months is given me because of my B.A. The problem now is not what shall I do but which of the many opportunities offered me is the place of greatest service. So - with a trust in your never failing interest and willingness to help I am again coming to you for advice.
In the first place I can go over seas in our Base Unit. The need you know is great, the desire to go is in all of us, but I have a mother and sister who would be left alone.
In the second place there is the field of Home Defence - Public Health Work. During my month of District work in connection with the Henry Street Settlement, Miss Lillian Wald said to me "Do not let Miss Greener persuade you to do Institutional Work - come back to us - you are peculiarly fitted for the work - We need women like you." In District Work I was as happy as I was in the Zoo. Lab. The people I met were so much broader minded and clearer thinkers than those in the Institutions. The financial recompense does not come up to the satisfaction one finds in the work. As a Public Health Worker I fear I should have to continue to wonder how I was going to get shoes & underwear and still see Nazimova play "The Wild Duck" etc. my mother and sister are still inclined to measure success by the money one earns. Personally I live 8-10 hrs. a day in work - so Heaven give me the work I can love!
In the third place, I have been three times called down to Miss Greener's to hear this proposition
"Miss Smith, I want to help you to plan your future, so that I may direct your next years work to lead up to your lifes work. I know that now you are considering Public Health work but we all feel that you are much better adapted to Institutional work. I want women with me with high ideals, and the courage to say what they think. The training school needs reorginization [sic] of spirit - coöperation between the staff and nurses, understanding and sympathy between supervisors and pupil nurses. You are a born leader you lead your class in mistakes and out of them, in good times etc. I say that you have been a successful Senior on the ward - not because of your practical nursing but because of your influence on the girls under you" etc. So she offers me the position of instructor of the sciences here, or, to give it the tag, "assistant superintendant." [sic] She wants to make me superintendant [sic] of a hospital some day - and strangely enough I cringe at the thought. Girls come here with as high ideals as those have who enter the college. The field for service in a hospital is limitless. There is a great need for someone to reorganize the old military discipline into a Student Government, to wipe out the vulgar and commonplace, to replace the two-facedness of tattling supervisors with clear sighted, straight thinking trustfullness. [sic] All during our training we girls have felt the need of a guiding personality like Miss Woolley, Dr. Clapp or Dr. Morgan. There is no one here who is not encaged in a starch spotless uniform with a heart like an antiseptic sponge.
However, if I were given power from above to hold the vision of a reorganized tr. school, and to strive after it, I fear I should lose my position or put a stick of dynamite under Mt. Sinai. I loathe it! Last winter a girl was expelled. She went to live in the apartments of two graduate nurses whose reputation was rank. One of the staff, Dr. Mann, just a young, clean, boy-doctor, came to me & told that this girl would not be straight inside of one month if she staye din that environment & said "For God's sake Dropsy (my nickname) get her to go home." So he got me the address & I went alone and found her out for the evening. From the cigarette stubs & Greenwich village air of her room I knew Dr. Mann was right.
I mentioned this to no one - but in three days Miss Greener had me in her office for "playing private detective for Dr. Mann." She quoted as my sayings, things I had never even tho't - forinstance [sic] that this girl was young & attractive & that Dr. Mann had lost his head - She accused Dr. Mann of "a morbid curiosity or something worse" Ugh - the scandal was vile. I have worked one year with Dr. Mann & the last two months I have been senior on his ward and worked with him from 5-6 hrs. every day under every kind of circumstance. I have seen him too tired to care whether he hung on or not - and, in cases where other Doctors take advantage of your own fatigue & loneliness, I have seen Dr. Mann pull himself up and clear out - to smoke it off in his room.
Miss Greener had no foundation for such accusations except gossip & I hate her for it!
AgaiAnother time she accused me of taking my troubles to the House Staff! So, you see what falls to the lot of one who coöperatesAnd yet, she wants me here!!?
In the fourth place, my mother & sister want to go to Colrado [sic] with my mother's family for 2 yrs. Miss L. Wald & Miss Shatz both say that Public Health work is a caring field in the west & have promised me a position there with one of their workers if I go.
As a climax I still want my M.D. The Doctors all say "Keep away from the institution & say they'll be disappointed with me if I come back here. Dr. Mann says of my reorganization idea "Go to it, kid, but you will lose your job" - Of the medical course they say "It's a damn hard struggle but you can do it". They shrug their shoulders over Public Health work - not knowing much about it.
I wish I knew - What do you think of it all?
The funny part of it all is that if I were to die tomorrow there wouldn't be any difference to anyone - not even to me - so why worry it out. I almost believe that the place for such an unattached mortal as I - is "Over There." Mother would soon realize how little I am in her life anyway - My sister Dot - has already filled my place. - and I could take the place of someone who must conserve her life for another generation.
My present work on the Surgical ward makes me feel the transitoryness [sic] of life. Surgery is certainly marked by the reckless spirit of the age. We operate nine at
ata time - the records coming down for 8-9 min. operations to 1 1/2 hr. Whenever the surgeons attack the nervous system they are completely foiled. The result is either of two things, immediate death or an "exploratory," ending in months of paralysis and agonizing pain. Spinal tumors, Jacksonian epilepsy, sub-temporal decompressions have all been miserable failures. I dread to see a "brain case" enter. The patient is usually well except for periodic headaches or convulsions, they go to the operating room - return in a stupor lasting until death, dead - or worse, still, heavy - helpless bodies full of pain.As a sequel to that picture hanging in your office of the surgeons keen faces bent over an operation (Forgive my lapse of memory as to name & artist!) I should like to put the one I saw the other day. A practically healthy patient went to the O.R. for a spinal operation. Dr. Elsberg did a "beautiful piece of work" but the patient came to me - practically dead - I called the Drs. from the O.R. gave her immediate stimulation, put her up in shock, got out the oxygen tank - but she was dead before the Drs. could get downstairs. In they came, dressed in the operating room gowns, masks & gloves. They had gloried in the technique of the operation but now they stood over the body of the patient whose life they had forgotten in the midst of their scientific skill. Dr. Gotterman threw his coat over his shoulder & looked at Dr. Mann - then at me. There was a blank, searching, failed, expression that hardly expressed itself in the words "How did it happen"? Imagine asking me that - as if I could offer nay explanation when she came back to me in a clear state of collapse. I had given the stimulation & everything so they just had to shrug their old Jew shoulders and say "Patient evidently died of respiratory paralysis" That is only one case out of many but on they go until I call my ward an experimental Lab, and pity the patients as I used to the cats in the cat house.
I do not remember if I thanked you for the account of the fire. I wish I might help to build our new Williston Hall. I will someday.
In class the other day Miss Kevins mentioned the "earth worm" I had not heard my old friend's name in so long I looked up suddenly with a rush of memories of charts & lectures, and foggy wet nights on South Campus. How ironical it was to be awakened by a voice "What is the matter Miss Smith, have you never heard of an earth worm"? Not having the background of my wild racing thoughts no one knew why I laughed and laughed. Not hear of an earthworm -? - Time makes fools of us all. Sometime someone will surely ask me if I have never heard of a bed pan.
Anyway I, later, threw in a volume of information on the taenig solime - [?]
I go down to the path. lab whenever I get homesick - crew up & down the focusing wheels of the microscope, run my hands under & regulate the mirror, uncork the zylol bottle and take deep breaths until once more I am hearing the click of the microtame and living in the days of Ipsamus Tau.
What are you going to do with your long vacation?
I am taking none this year so you will find me at Mount Sinai if ever you come to New York.
This letter is much longer than I intended - I fear I have "oershot myself["] - but have comfort - I do not cause you to suffer - very offen. [sic]
I should love to hear a little of Mount Holyoke's life - of Dr. Morgan, Dr. Clapp, Miss Couch - Miss Lucy Smith, and the funny old dried up Botany people (sh!) - Does Jeanette Marks still wear black velvet & spend energy over the expressing of art in poetry & poetry in art - art for arts sake - beauty is its own excuse for being - all in all - ante and pass the bucket?
I'd like to sail in the clouds with her once more - but I fear I'd get very heavy & if she did pull me halfway up I'd tumble down to awaken in a slum that was crying [?] for "Argyrol to save the babies eyes etc"
With love to you - and especially to Dr. Clapp - Dr. Morgan and Miss Smith (I can never write Dr. Smith)