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DR. GARRETT ANDERSON, C.B.E., AND DR. FLORA MURRAY, C.B.E.
Dr. Garrett Andersonand Dr. Flora Murray have contributed one of the finest pages to the annals of women’s work during the war, and by their success have greatly advanced the position of women in the medical world.
Dr. Garrett Anderson was already a well-known surgeon, and Dr. Flora Murray equally well known as a physician, in pre-war days, the former having qualified in 1897, and the latter in 1903. Dr. Garrett Anderson is a daughter of Mrs. Elizabeth Garrett Anderson,M.D., the first British medical woman.
During the month after the war broke out, Dr. Garrett Anderson and Dr. Flora Murray together organised a Voluntary Women’s Hospital Unit, staffed by medical women, and offered their services to the French Red Cross. They established a hospital of 100 beds in Paris, at Claridge’s Hotel, Champs Elysées, and it is notable that this was the first of the voluntary hospitals in Paris to start work in September, 1914. Both British and French wounded were received and treated.
It was not long before the excellent work of these two doctors attracted very special attention, with the result that they were approached by the War Office, and asked to organise a hospital at Wimereux near Boulogne, attached to the Royal Army Medical Corps. This invitation was a considerable triumph, for it was the first time that medical women were officially singled out by the British Government and given equal responsibility with medical men.
The Army medical authorities were quick to realise how wisely their trust had been bestowed, and, in February, 1915, Dr. Garrett Anderson and Dr. Flora Murray were asked to take up work on a larger scale, and to undertake the entire management of the Endell Street Hospital, a large military hospital in London.
During its two years of work for the sick and wounded, no military hospital has succeeded in establishing a finer record. To see it is a wonderful experience. The hospital consists of 17 wards, with 578 beds, and is entirely staffed by women—surgeons, doctors, pathologists, oculists, dental surgeons, anæsthetists, dispensers, nurses, orderlies. The only men are the patients.
Sir Alfred Keogh, the Director-General of the Army Medical Service, said, when speaking of it: “The hospital is in every respect a military hospital, differing in no way from any other military hospital in the country. Major operations comparable to those in any other institution are performed, and there is no limitation whatever, either medical or surgical, to the functions which the staff of the hospital undertakes. Particularly excellent work has been done in the pathological departments. A special feature of the surgery of the hospital has been the adoption there of a new method of treating wounds, introduced by Professor Rutherford Morison.”
This treatment consists of the use of a bismuth-iodoform-paraffin paste for cases of septic wounds and fractures. Writing of the treatment, Dr. Garrett Anderson says: “In every case fœtor has disappeared, sepsis has subsided, and union of bone has taken place with astonishing rapidity, while the condition of the patient has benefited greatly from being spared painful daily dressings.”
Set in the very centre of London, and surrounded by tall buildings, with the buzz and whirl of London traffic all about it, a visitor would be inclined at first to think the hospital a sad and gloomy place. But that impression soon passes, for in the wards, bright with colour, in the recreation room and library, but most of all in the faces of the soldier patients, happiness and contentment are the prevailing elements. An atmosphere is as hard to describe as it is easy to recognise, but the atmosphere of the Women’s Hospital breathes rest and quiet, and the mutual confidence between patients and doctors which is so invaluable an asset in successful treatment.
Here, then, for the first time, it has been proved beyond all dispute, both to the medical profession and to the world outside, that women doctors and surgeons can equal the success of men in all branches of their calling, and not only with the ailments of women and children. The work that these women have proved themselves able to accomplish and to continue without sign of strain during three years of war ought at last to secure the recognition that it deserves. Dr. Garrett Anderson and Dr. Flora Murraywill feel that they have worked successfully, not only for their patients, but for medical women in general, if, as a result of their demonstration, the doors of the medical schools are thrown open to women. That the majority of medical women working for their country to-day have been forced to gain their knowledge and skill in the schools of the enemy is surely one of the conditions which the war will sweep away for ever.
LADY PAGET, G.B.E.Hugh CecilTo face page17
LADY PAGET, G.B.E.
Hugh Cecil
To face page17