American University
Beirut, Lebanon
December 16, 1943Dear Miss Turner,
Yours of November 10 arrived today, and a grand letter it was too. I am delighted to know of your job. It can't help but be an experience. It must be fun to have a homogeneous series. Undoubtedly you remember my class of 22 representing 22 nationalities, no, no. 11. That is why we can't join the international council in this land. More delighted still was I to know of your return excursion into the nursing world. Thank you, thank you. For the last fifteen years I have diminished my attempts at application consistently and I really feel at times as though the girls do get an idea of anatomy and physiology. At any rate the man who does Pharmacology says they know what they should about the heart beat and the cardiac mechanism. On the other hand,- graduates of my early classes look chagrined when I sometimes in passing quiz them. Nevertheless they end up with a feeling for the subject which is not all repugnance and now and then I get a gleam in some eye and a phrase like "It is wonderful, really --"
I think I wrote you just after my return from the mountains and I believe it was long hand. Since then we have acquired two new nurses on our staff, the instructor a woman of experience and kindness and generous attitude, the other a young damsel one year out who has yet to learn many things not only about us but about lots of other things. She looks well in uniform and I think is taking authority a bit hard. I mean the possession of authority. True most of the rest of us are old line gals with plenty of years in the game behind us and we are probably prejudiced. Before the dean left for home, we were chatting in a group of a chosen few and I suggested his bringing back a good director of nurses. "Yes["] he said "somebody with a combination of tact and stubborn ness." [sic] I'm still wavering between being pleased and not being. Since he felt we are all learning how it is to make decisions without the chance of checking by his judgement before putting them into effect. The clinical group here is depleted sadly there being only one American this year and one Englishman on the staff. Fortunately some of the preclinical departments are better off.
Almost every day I think how lucky we are to have an instructor. Last year's effort was pretty weak. We have a good preliminary group with some fine people in it. The academic level is not remarkable but the personality level is high. I loved what you said about the "soul of the apparatus[.]" I don't find it in my meagre laboratory teaching but I do in the tightness of a bottom sheet and in a ward where the housekeeping is serene. Our big big problem this year is equipment and the prevention of losses. Everything is salable and a hospital of this kind has so many loopholes. Counting of silver after every meal is one of the duties one hardly thinks of as nursing.
The budget requirements have left us far shorter of nursing power than we like and we have had to simplify and simplify. At any rate all our patients get baths or near baths daily and Fran Wooding tells me she did not see anything like that at home. She turned up here a week ago this evening at about nine oclock, hungry and dirty and tired from that deadly trip by train from Cairo. I scrambled eggs and gave her other odds and ends and heated the water and sat by her after she was in bed until all hours. I had not seen her since she went through here nine years ago. We really went to town, Holyoke friends including her visit with you was it Founder's Day, Presbyterian folks including all the things they are doing and not doing there, dear old Yale with special emphasis on what we ourselves consider nursing education of the better sort. We really had a grand visit. She left the next morning for Baghdad and Tabris.
By all means do send a reprint of the work on weights. We need the light it will give. On the whole we don't have the underweight problem here since the standard of feminine beauty is on the right side for our age group, but we do need good sound emphasis on the TB prevention angle. This fall has been an uncommonly good hear for student nurse health. Our graduates do well anyway. By the time they have gotten through training they have lost many parasites though they do get more amebae [sic] at intervals, they have wiped out tonsil troubles and stray appendices and have what is [sic] more reached the level of a salary, so the days lost are few. True they have very regular working hours and almost never overtime though very busy days. The food is good and the recreation not exhausting. This year we have had a series of sacroiliac arthritis. I do not know what effect the train of thought among the diagnosticians has. The OPD girls seem to have more time for it than those in the hospital. The disease of the decade however seems to be infectious jaundice. It will be interesting to see how it is eventually regarded. Also of course wartime diseases are of great interest, typhus and its work will be interesting in the literature. When the local authorities set out to do wholesale inoculations of any sort they really do a good job. Naturally too we will learn much about malaria. The new drugs also are pretty thrilling.
I'm becoming quite a housewife believe it or not. Luckily at last I have a good maid who outdoes me on the fine touches. It is fun to come home and find my comb and brush washed as well as the kitchen sink, and the garbage tin. This evening Emily Ravenhill whom you would like came up and we made mincemeat. We will follow it up by contributing mince turnovers to the student nurses party next week. My frugal New England soul went on holiday while I poured out sugar and spice and raisins by the pint and figs and orange peel and lemonjuice [sic] and brandy. The resulting taste is good. Tomorrow I dedicate my last tin of applesauce to making a fruitcake or dakes. One can give such things for Christmas. The shops are so depleted of givable things either in a price one can meet or in quality that it is out of the question to buy gifts. I had some tiny safety pins made in silver. One hasn't been able to get little ones for a long time and I judge others as well as I occasionally have use for a small pin.
For reading I've just finished So Little Time by John P Marquand and am now deep in Hervey Allen's Forst and the Fort. Some of the former I thought was magnificent but I think it does not equal his Late George Apley as a creation.
No word from Libby since she went to South Hadley. I long to hear. Dr. Miller's wife has relatives in Chambersburgh Nelson Apartment Edgar Avenue. I do not know the size of the town or the name of her people, though it might be Gordon. If you should encounter her at a teaparty she would tell you something about us though she has been away since 1930. They might be there a part of the year though I think it is doubtful. I am so glad to hear what you say about Billy Conrad. She has a difficult job on her hands and I wish her every kind of success. Really difficult. We nurses do get sot [sic] in our ways. What do you think of girls going all winter long in ankle socks in a climate that never gets down to freezing. It gets uncomfortably cold and I always get miserable fierce chilblains, but the cost of stockings is something and some of them are pretty hardy, the girls I mean. I wavered in the decision to be uniform and posted a notice today to say that After tomorrow those who wish may wear long stockings and those who get colds frequent will be asked to and adding that the matter is one which calls for individual good judgement. Most of them wear woolly shirs [sic] shirts under their uniforms. I suppose the woolly shirts will do more good than warm knees.
Well so it goes. I would like to come home, but naturally must wait until the time is ripe. Do take care of yourself with all the demands you are meeting. I shall love to hear about the Chambersburg year if it is a year. If this goes off at once you should get it before the end of the semester.
Love as ever
Katy