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DR. ELSIE INGLIS
ToMiss Inglis,M.B., C.M., belongs the honour of originating the Scottish Women’s Hospitals, one of the noblest efforts achieved by women in the war. As a medical woman, Dr. Inglis, who qualified in 1892, has specialised in surgery, and for many years she has held the posts of surgeon and gynæcologist to the Edinburgh Hospital and Dispensary for Women and Children, and lecturer to the School of Medicine in Edinburgh.
At the outbreak of war Dr. Inglis felt that the medical services of women should be organised for the country, and she originated the idea of forming the Scottish Women’s Hospital Units for war service, staffed entirely by women. The idea was carried out through the organisation of the Scottish Federation of Women Suffrage Societies. In the early months the War Office, though since converted, refused to accept women’s hospitals, so Dr. Inglis and her committee offered their services to the Allies. Their record of work is truly wonderful, and presents an outstanding example of women’s industry and administrative ability. Hospitals have been established and maintained in France, Serbia, Corsica, Salonika, Rumania, and Russia, and the work has been entirely supported by the funds which theorganisation has raised, mainly through the branches of the National Union of Women Suffrage Societies throughout Great Britain.
Dr. Inglis has been throughout the leading spirit, and has displayed extraordinary initiative. After spending the first months of the war in starting the work at headquarters, she went to Serbia in 1915 to act as Commissioner to the Scottish Women’s Hospitals established there. One unit on its way to Serbia was detained for a few weeks in Malta for service with the British wounded at a moment of medical shortage, and Lord Methuen, the Military Governor, wrote a glowing appreciation of their work. “They leave here,” he wrote, “blessed by myself, surgeons, nurses, and patients alike, having proved themselves most capable and untiring workers.” In Serbia the Scottish women were confronted with all the hardships and difficulties experienced by workers in that unfortunate country. Undaunted, however, they established their hospitals, heroically overcoming the problems of sanitation and supplies which beset them on all sides. The hospital at Kragujevatz, over which Dr. Inglis had personal charge, was described by the military authorities as a picture of cleanliness, order, and comfort.
When the time of the Serbian retreat came, the five hospitals in charge of the Scottish women fell back towards Albania. At Krushevatz Dr. Inglis decided to remain with her staff to care for the Serbian wounded during the enemy occupation. Another unit under Dr. Alice Hutchinson also stayed, and was taken prisoner; while the remaining staffs accompanied the retreating armies across the mountains.
DR. ELSIE INGLISBassanoTo face page33
DR. ELSIE INGLIS
Bassano
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“These months at Krushevatz were a strange mixture of sorrow and happiness,” Dr. Inglis wrote afterwards. “There was a curious exhilaration in working for those grateful, patient men ... yet the unhappiness in the Serbian houses and the physical wretchedness of those cold, hungry prisoners lay always like a dead weight on our spirits.”
By February, 1916, the hospital was emptied and the staff sent as prisoners to Vienna. After enduring many discomforts, they were eventually released through the good offices of the American Embassy, and enabled to return to England, where their friends had heard no word of them during four months. When the veil was at last lifted, it showed Dr. Inglis coming out of all the stress and suffering the first woman to wear the decoration of the White Eagle, given to her by the Serbian Government in recognition of her services. Other members of her unit received the Order of St. Sava. “The Serbian nation,” said the Crown Prince, “will never forget what these women have done.”
But not content with such services to Serbia, and with her courage still undaunted, Dr. Inglis again set out in September, 1916, at the head of a fresh unit, for service with the Serbian army fighting in South Russia. The unit, numbering seventy-six women, comprised a staff of women doctors, an X-ray operator, a dispenser, seventeen fully-trained nurses, sixteen orderlies, besides cooks and laundresses. The accompanying transport column, under the Hon. Mrs. Haverfield, consisted of eight ambulances, two kitchen cars, a repair car, four lorries, and three touring cars, with a large staff of women chauffeurs and cooks. The unit landed at Archangel and travelled across Russia to Odessa, where the workers met with arousing reception. They then proceeded to join the Serbian division to which they were attached, in the Dobrudja, and another splendid chapter of Scottish Women’s Hospital work was opened. A base hospital was started at Medjidia in Rumania, with a field station nearer to the front; but after about a fortnight’s work the inevitable evacuation was ordered before the Bulgarian advance, and the unit retreated with the army. Of this first hospital in Rumania Dr. Inglis writes: “The day after the unit arrived at Medjidia, where the whole seventy-five were obliged to camp in one big room, wounded began to pour in and ambulances to ply between there and the firing line. There were no roads, just tracks across endless plains.” Of the field station Dr. Inglis says: “The destination was a place smoking from shells, and filled with a sense of destruction and desolation impossible to describe. The Scottish women set up a camp near by, and were attached to the Serbian Field Hospital. Aeroplanes bombed them daily, and on one occasion the ambulance suffered a heavy bombardment. When the orders came to move, the transport went through five appalling days of labour, which can be understood only by people who have done cross-country tracks in roadless countries ... the scenes were indescribable—of confusion, terror, misery; of blocks of carts, troops, pigs, women, children, lame horses, and exhausted animals of all sorts. The refugees were throwing out things to lighten their carts, and the Scottish women got out and picked them up to use for their own kitchen.”
Dr. Inglis and the hospital party, on evacuating Medjidia, managed to secure what is known as a “sanitary train”—a long train of horse waggons,very different from an ambulance train, and they had to do their best for the crowd of wounded on board. Eventually Dr. Inglis reached Braila, where she was able to render valuable help to a large number of Rumanian wounded, who were very short of medical assistance. Some members of the unit have since returned to England, but Dr. Inglis is still in Rumania. She is temporarily working for the Russian army, pending the re-formation of the Serbian divisions, to which she will return.
The General in command of the Russian Red Cross on the Rumanian front (Prince Dolgouroukoff) has conferred the medal of St. George on all the members of the unit now at Reni who have worked under fire.
“Wherever the odds against the Allies seem overwhelming, there one may be nearly sure of finding a unit of the Scottish Women’s Hospitals working for the wounded,” writes an admirer of their work. “You do not find them in the well-equipped hospitals surrounded by every modern appliance, with crowds of men orderlies to carry out the heavy work, but rather in back-blocks of the war, as one may say, fighting a desperate battle of their own against dirt, disease, and wounds, and winning back precious lives of men whose language is in many cases unknown to them.”
Dr. Elsie Inglis has that magnetic personality which can command efficiency, even with inadequate equipment and in hopeless environment. The inspiring work of this great woman doctor makes her indeed a worthy leader for those wonderful Scottish women, who are putting their whole soul into the work they have undertaken, without any thought of recompense, without vainglory, and without any other motive than the desire to help and heal.