3/21/15Dear Miss Turner,
Don't be so enthusiastic over my future line of work. It's catching, you know, and I might get feeling "paralyzed" myself.
Seriously though I don't blame you for offering no encouragement. The diagnosis treatment and research in mental diseases - or better conditions - are a hundred years behind every other branch of medicine because the medical profession has always shared the view of the laity which is "what's the use?" Even in such a blaze of enlightenment as exists in this spot it is the fashion among the medical, surgical & gyn. fraternities to ridicule Dr. Meyer and his clinic. This winter the whole laryngology department spent weeks with Xrays and the most elaborate instruments for ear work on a case of hysterical deafness. And why? Because they were too blind or too stubborn to recognize the possibility of a mental complex that Olympus of Justice the civil & criminal law of the U.S. will condemn a woman for killing her own child though she has a mentality of nine years recording to even the roughest mental tests, - if at the time the act was committed she was not raving enough to fail to know the difference between right and wrong. So I don't blame you in the least for your lack of encouragement.
This first week on medical service is not very exciting. So far I have but one patient, a so-called neurosthenic from Alabama whom Howard Kelly sent over to the medical side because he couldn't find anything the matter. All our tests have been negative thus far, but she still complains of "nervousness & weakness" and weeps & whines upon the neck of her fine-looking young husband, who has been straining every nerve to make good as an engineer. I did have another patient, but in the mercy of Providence she took a notion to go home the day after she came. She had only hydronephrosis diabetes mellitus, except thalmic goiter and the morphine habit. She'd have lived with the diabetes etc for years, but the morphine which she took at 1/4 gr. every two hours will kill her in a few months. she was just entering the period of irresponsibility which this drug always produces.
We are having an epidemic of grippe colds down here. A number of the doctors on the staff are afflicted. Ruth Guy has one, as well as [a] girl in my own class. The offending organism is not the true influenza bacillus, but a low down streptococcus. Yesterday I was called to see our former housekeeper of the sorority who is keeping house over here. She had a temperature of 103° & pulse of 106 & ached all over. She wouldn't have a regular Dr. Today she is some better but still has a temperature of 101°. It's a typical picture of the real article.
I have been having a little neurosis myself which I am treating with some of Ruth's French liquer [sic] - St. Benedict, or something like that. I feel quite cheered up after a small wine glass.
I don't see much of Margaret this year. She seems to be disgusted with me for some reason or another.
Am glad to hear your eyes are slightly better.
My kind regards to your mother.
As ever
Esther