CHAPTER XX
Opening of the New York Infirmary, both dispensary and hospital—Details of its arrangement and furnishing—Dr. Zakrzewska is resident physician and instructor to the students, and also superintendent and housekeeper, while carrying on her private practice and consulting in the Out-Practice—Sample record of one day’s work—Four resident students from the Philadelphia medical college—Incidents in practice—Mobbing of the Infirmary following death of a patient. (Twenty-eight years of age: 1856-1857.)
We at once entered into negotiation for the house we had in view and obtained the refusal of it for the 1st of March, 1857. We also ordered the twenty-four iron bedsteads needed, for the sum of one hundred dollars, and all the ladies went to work begging and preparing house linen, so that when the year closed we held a most joyful New Year’s Day, and received so many congratulations that we actually thought ourselves in the command of thousands of dollars.
The house was an old-fashioned mansion of the Dutch style, at the corner of Bleecker and Crosby Streets, just at the outer end of what was called the “Five Points,” fully respectable on the Bleecker Street side, and full of patients and misery on the other side and at the rear. And we spent the few weeks which elapsed before we could begin to arrange it in getting the good will of editors, ministers and business men, in order that we might procure the means for carrying on a charity for which we had nothing but an empty purse.
Dr. Blackwell’s influence among the Quakers, many of them rich, and Miss Mary L. Booth’s indefatigable notices in the newspapers, opened to us the ways of procuring the necessary materials for the dispensary, which occupied the lower front room. It contained a consulting desk, an examination table behind a large screen, shelves for medicines and a table for preparing the ingredients of prescriptions. The front entrance hall was comfortably arranged with settees for the patients to wait their turn. Donations from several wholesale druggists were received, and second-hand furniture suitable for our purposes was cheaply acquired.
A door was put in to separate the back hall from the front hall, and in this back hall was placed a large stove which heated the stairways, there being no furnace in the house. This back hall also served as a dining room for the officers, while the large kitchen opening into it was ample for all culinary purposes and also allowed space for the servants’ dining table.
The second floor was arranged for two wards, each containing six beds; while the third floor was made into a maternity department, the little hall room serving as a sitting room for the physicians. Open grate coal fires provided the only heat throughout the house.
The fourth, or attic, floor contained four rooms—two large ones and two small ones, with a square hall in the center. The two large rooms served as sleeping rooms, one for four students and the other for three servants. One of the small rooms served a similar purpose for the resident physician and one student, while the other was the much needed store and trunk room. As the attic was rather low studded, the doors were all kept open, and the skylight of the center hall was kept lifted except during a storm.
These apartments were furnished with such material as benevolence provided. It was the most curious mixture of elegant old furniture and cheap stands and chairs, without any comfort or system, each of us doing the best we could with our belongings as the house was almost entirely devoid of closet room.
Into this primitive, first true “Woman’s Hospital” in the world, I moved in March, superintending all its arrangements, with the kind assistance of a few ladies appointed by the now organized board of directors. We ventured to hire one servant to clean, wash and do general work, as I was the only inmate until the house was regularly and formally opened on May 1, 1857.
Dr. Blackwell was aided in procuring speakers by Dr. Emily who had returned from Europe a few weeks before this memorable event. Henry Ward Beecher, Dr. William Elder from Philadelphia and Dr. Kissam, a prominent New York physician who was in favor of our experiment, carried out the program and solemnized the undertaking, while the audience, seated among the snowy white little beds, felt proud of having accomplished so much.
But even here my proposition to have one of the Drs. Blackwell also speak and explain our intentions was refused by our patrons, because it was feared that she might speak “like a Woman’s Rights woman.” So we remained in the background, in the most elated spirits yet modest in appearance.
A sign on the front door told the purpose of the house, and very soon our old patrons of the Tompkins Square Dispensary found their way to the now comparatively speaking, quite stylish place. And before a month had passed, we had our beds filled with patients and a daily attendance of thirty and more dispensary patients. Drs. Elizabeth and Emily Blackwell and myself each attended the dispensary two mornings in the week, from nine to twelve, while four students from the Philadelphia college came to live in the hospital in the capacity of internes, apothecaries and pupils of nursing.
The students spent thus their summer months between their lecture terms in Philadelphia, grateful to have at last an opportunity to see actual practice. Of course, they had to pay for this opportunity, three dollars a week for board, as the establishment could not afford to feed them.
We also had two nurses, one for the general wards and one for the maternity department. They were both unskilled and considered the training as more than sufficient equivalent for their services, receiving simply an allowance of two dollars per week for their necessary clothing. Thus we kept true to our promise to begin at once a system for training nurses, although the time specified for that purpose was only six months. However, one woman remained with us for several years, and in the course of time she became invaluable as head nurse.
As for myself, I occupied a peculiar position. I was resident physician, superintendent, housekeeper and instructor to the students of whom none was graduated, so that I had the full responsibility of all their activities, both inside and outside the little hospital. In order to give an idea of the situation, I want to relate from my notes the record of one day of my work.
At 5:30 A. M., I started in an omnibus for the wholesale market, purchasing provisions for a week, and at 8:00, I was back to breakfast. This consisted, for all inmates except patients, of tea, bread and butter, Indian meal mush and syrup, every morning except Sundays when coffee and breakfast bacon were added.
After breakfast, I made my visit to the patients in the house with two of the students, while the other two students attended upon Dr. Blackwell in the dispensary. Then a confinement case arrived and I attended to her, giving orders to students and nurses. After this, I descended into the kitchen department, as the provisions had arrived, and with the assistance of the cook I arranged all these so as to preserve the materials, and I settled the diet for all as far as possible.
I then took another omnibus ride to the wholesale druggist, begging and buying needed articles for the dispensary and the hospital, arriving home at 1:00 P. M. for dinner. This consisted every day of a good soup, the soup meat, potatoes, one kind of well-prepared vegetable, with fruit for dessert. On Sundays, we had a roast or a steak, while in the winter we occasionally had poultry when this was sent in as a donation and when the amount was more than was needed for the patients.
After dinner, I usually went out to see my private patients, because receiving no compensation I depended upon my earnings for personal needs. On this day, however, I was detained by the confinement case mentioned and could not go out till 5:00 P. M., returning at 7:00 P. M. for tea. This always consisted of bread and butter, tea and sauce or cheese or fresh gingerbread. After again making the rounds of the patients in the house, it was 9:00 o’clock.
Then the students assembled with me in the little hall room, I cutting out towels or pillow cases or other needed articles for the house or the patients, while the students folded or even basted the articles for the sewing machine as they recited their various lessons for the day. After their recital, I gave them verbal instruction in midwifery. We finished the work of the day by 11:30, as I never allowed any one to be out of bed after midnight unless detained by a patient.
This day is a fair illustration of our life. If I had not food to provide, it was something else; if not drugs, it was drygoods; and if neither, I attended the dispensary at least two forenoons, and if either of the Drs. Blackwell was prevented by private business from attending her regular forenoon, I attended in her place.
The strain upon us all, added to the very meager diet, was immense, and it became a necessity to provide relaxations. So I arranged that during the summer, once a month, we all went on a picnic during an afternoon in the hills across the Hudson; and in the winter, once a month, we went to a good theater which was near by, and where we often saw Joseph Jefferson, Laura Keene, Karl Formes or Brignoli. These entertainments were highly refreshing, and, what was very important, they were cheap; theater prices were then very moderate and simple picnics were furnished at low rates.
Oh! how delightful were those days, in their youthful enthusiasm and filled with hopes. They were full of hard work, both day and night, for our out-door poor practice increased almost faster than the dispensary morning clinics, but a few leisure hours once in a while were enjoyed as we had never before in our lives enjoyed the most desirable events or festivities.
Also, we were patronized by those families who, in favor of our medical work as reformers, often invited us to their receptions where we enjoyed intellectual diversion. Among others already mentioned were the Sunday evenings at the house of the sisters, Alice and Phœbe Cary, where distinguished men and women filled the homelike parlors and partook of plenty of ice water as refreshment.
Another house open to us was that of Mrs. Oakes Smith, where art and literature were represented. Another was that of the leading lady of fashion, Mrs. Cole, where whist and music formed the entertaining pleasures. Here I felt especially at home with Mr. George Hildreth as whist partner, his being almost deaf giving me a fine opportunity to be diverted without exertion when too tired even to talk.
To be seen and noticed in these circles was an advantage to medical women and to our little hospital, for, in spite of our very simple diet and the plain living of the patients, we were always in debt; and we had to make great efforts to raise money, holding even a little Sale again before Christmas. This Sale was held in our own wards, the patients being removed for a whole week, but we raised the two thousand, six hundred dollars which was the cost of our first year’s experiment, not including the rent which was pledged, as already told.
It was a great oversight and much to be regretted, that we considered this hospital experiment and ourselves of so little importance in themselves that no printed report had been preserved until the year 1868, that is, eleven years from the time we opened the Infirmary.
I have also only very imperfect private notes, but I find that the expense, all in all, including the board of the students, was a little over two thousand, six hundred dollars, from May 1, 1857, to May 1, 1858; and that the average morning dispensary attendance was thirty; while the in-door patients were about one hundred during the year. But we had a very large out-door practice, one of the four students alone, Dr. Mary E. Breed, attending fourteen cases of childbed in one month; while I was often sent for in the night to assist them with advice when their knowledge was not sufficient.
The practical gain to these young women was so great that they were not only devoted, hardworking and conscientious in their professional duties, but they were more than willing to bear great physical discomfort, as well as the ridicule which they encountered when they attempted to demand the recognition and the respect due to their calling. Everywhere among the better situated people, they met with discouraging remarks and questions, giving evidence that the opinion was that the practice of medicine by women would, in the course of time, be impossible, even if the present few were received as exceptions, or as the novelties of a fad. And the greatest tact was called for in accommodating ourselves and our work to the need of even the poorest people.
I may here describe one picture which memory recalls. Dr. Breed had been attending a difficult case of childbirth, in a negro quarter, and she called on me for consultation and assistance.
I entered a room which seemed filled with people of all sizes, and with faces shading from pitch black through all colors to what seemed pure Caucasian. This latter was the woman in the corner, near the table on which stood the lamp, and she was just being delivered of a mulatto baby by the doctor.
The rest of the swarm were both male and female, of whom the woman in the corner claimed eight or more. We did not concern ourselves with the relationship of the remainder, as they all seemed perfectly healthy and did not require our attention. It seems to me that there must have been about twenty-four persons in that room, to judge from the number of beds and the air.
We medical women all went home together at about one o’clock in the morning. It is strange to say but we had no fear about going to these squalid places, and there really was no need of fear either.
The greatest politeness and attention was given to our students when they were once accepted and, as in this case, the young doctor had to be nurse and comforter during the whole day, as well as doctor at the moment of crisis.
She felt quite safe during her stay and was provided with fresh milk—which she drank from the tin can of the store in which it was bought; and she ate the pie from the paper in which it was wrapped. She felt strong and at ease, and happy to have the opportunity to exercise her best influence during the twenty hours of her stay—which may or may not have sowed some seed for the better.
At any rate, gratefulness was gained in more than one way, for this kind of people being more or less under the control of the police and of missionaries at large, did much to spread a good reputation for us and for our work. In this way, women physicians became known and sought by just the class in whom they were interested and among whom they desired to work.
The need for the friendliness of the police towards us I can illustrate here also. A woman died in the hospital after childbirth. We had informed the many relations whom the poor and forsaken usually possess of the seriousness of the case. There was always one woman of the kinship at the bedside of the patient for about sixty hours before the death, which took place in the forenoon.
It was not an hour after this sad occurrence before all the cousins who had relieved each other at the bedside appeared, with their male cousins or husbands in working attire and with pickaxes and shovels, before our street door, demanding admission and shouting that the female physicians who resided within were killing women in childbirth with cold water.
Of course, an immense crowd collected, filling the block between us and Broadway, hooting and yelling and trying to push in the doors, both on the street and in the yard; so that we were beleaguered in such a way that no communication with the outside was possible. We could not call to the people who were looking out of the windows in the neighboring houses, our voices being drowned by the noise of the mob.
At this juncture the policeman who had charge of Bleecker Street and the one from Broadway came running up to the scene. On learning the complaint of the men, they commanded silence and ordered the crowd to disperse, telling them that they knew the doctors in that hospital treated the patients in the best possible way, and that no doctor could keep everybody from dying some time.