CHAPTER XXXII

Dr. Zakrzewska goes to Europe for her first vacation in fifteen years—Letter to Dr. Sewall from Switzerland—Dr. Helen Morton is appointed third attending physician to the Hospital (in charge of the Maternity)—Tragic death of Dr. Dimock—For the first time the Hospital has a woman on the staff as attending surgeon, Dr. C. Annette Buckel being thus appointed—The Hospital is represented by exhibits at the Centennial International Exhibition, the plans and elevations of the new buildings receiving an award—Mrs. Cheney writes from Europe of the interest taken over there in the Hospital, and the looking toward it from England, Scotland and Germany for encouragement and help. (1872-1877.)

The addition of a third attending physician at the Hospital (Dr. Helen Morton who took charge of the Maternity) and the continued increase in the number of younger doctors still further relieved Dr. Zakrzewska and enabled her in the summer of 1874 to go to Europe for a long-deferred but much-needed vacation. The constantly growing demands in both Hospital and private practice upon her professional skill, and in the community at large upon the many gifts of her broad personality, became at last a breaking strain upon the vitality so grievously depleted by the pioneer work of these first fifteen years in Boston.

Midway in this resting time (August 19, 1874) she writes to Dr. Sewall:

My vacation is half over, and just now I am enjoying a short stay in the queerest little old town and ditto hotel between the Bernese and Wallis Alps. Such a rest from work and care I have never had in all my life! My head is getting steady once more and, although I am not yet as quiet in my upper regions as I ought to be if I want again to work hard, I am certainly very, very much better than I was at the time I started from Boston. I have had only slight headaches, never sufficient to lie down, and I am much less confused, in spite of the three languages around me.

We travel in a very leisurely way, different from tourists, for we stop and sojourn wherever the fancy happens to take us. In this way, we have seen a great deal of Switzerland, and have enjoyed the usual places of interest as well as the out-of-the-way places such as where we are now.

I have so often thought of you and of what you are doing and have followed you in your summer’s work. I suppose just now you are away on your vacation. What I am most curious about is whether you succeeded in selling your present house, and whether you bought that nice one on Boylston Street. It would be such a beautiful situation that I wish I could find you settled there on my return.

... However beautiful all around me is here, I long for home and my friends. My home in Roxbury is, after all, the most desirable spot for me, and the few but true and kind friends I have made in America are far dearer to me than all I could possibly find here in Europe.

After this journey, I shall be more positive in my love for my American home than I ever was before. The very freedom one breathes in the air there is refreshing and stimulating compared with the air of servility, destitution and depravity which an observing person sees everywhere here. How Americans can prefer to live over here is to me incomprehensible.

... Miss Sprague has hardly yet got over the effects of her seasickness, and in four and a half weeks we shall undertake the journey again. We hope to be in Boston by the 2d of October ready for work. Please tell Dr. Dimock of the very pleasant call I had from Professor Meyer and that he gave me his picture to bring home to her. I hope she is doing well and can wait for my help till October.

I have little time for letter writing, as I am too tired to write at night and, besides, my eyes have given out. For the past few weeks, I can neither read nor thread a needle by candlelight, and often even by daylight everything is in a blur.

But tell Dr. Dimock I am thinking a good deal about her and hope she will not work too hard, so that she can bear the winter’s responsibility and have her turn here in Europe next summer.

In the spring of 1875 as planned in this letter, Dr. Dimock who was acting as attending surgeon, in addition to her duties as resident and attending physician, obtained leave of absence and sailed for Europe to undertake additional surgical study, but she had the misfortune to be a passenger on the steamer Schiller which was wrecked on the Scilly rocks early in May. Her loss was felt keenly, not only because of the charm of her personality but also because she had been a representative of the hopes of the Hospital for a woman who would be broadly fitted and trained to serve as attending surgeon. The name of Codman Avenue, a street which ran through the hospital grounds, was later in her memory changed to Dimock Street.

Later in the year, Dr. C. Annette Buckel, newly returned from two years of study of surgery in Vienna and Paris, was regularly appointed as attending surgeon. This was an important event for both Dr. Zakrzewska and the New England Hospital because now for the first time since 1866 an attending surgeon reappears in the annual report as a member of the staff. And this event was especially noteworthy because for the first time the name of such staff member was that of a woman.

Although Dr. Buckel did not retain her position beyond that first year (removing to California on account of ill health), yet her appointment seemed to end the surgical vicissitudes of the Hospital. Never since then has there been a time when the position of attending surgeon has been omitted from the annual report. And never has there been lacking a qualified woman to carry on this work. Indeed, it soon became necessary to appoint a second attending surgeon, then a third, and then a fourth. And to these have been added from time to time one or more assistant surgeons. And with this conquest of the surgical field was surmounted the last difficulty in filling staff positions with qualified women.

Dr. Zakrzewska’s vacation in Europe had lasted only a few months, though it should have been a year or even more. Recuperation from brain and nerve fatigue is much slower than from muscle fatigue, a lesson we all learn only by bitter experience. Her wonderful physique once more drew upon its vital reserves and responded to the spur of her call to duty, and she returned to work with apparently renewed vigor.

Fortunate it was that she was able to resume the helm at the Hospital in this eventful year of 1875, following Dr. Dimock’s untimely loss and the necessity which had arisen for Dr. Sewall’s taking a long vacation.

For eight months it must have seemed to her almost like a reversion to earlier days. But there was the incomparable difference that Dr. Helen Morton now took entire charge of the Maternity, having developed at the Paris Maternité, according to Dr. Zakrzewska, “unusual skill and special fitness for difficult and surgical obstetric cases.” And later Dr. Elizabeth C. Keller[19] came from Philadelphia to serve as resident physician, she succeeding Dr. Buckel the following year as attending surgeon and occupying this latter position for many years.

Writing of this time to Dr. Sewall in Europe, Dr. Zakrzewska says:

I think we shall all like Dr. Keller. And it is a very good thing to have a fresh and new element come into Boston, as we tend to renew ourselves too much from and through ourselves.

In the autumn the return of Dr. Sewall and the arrival of Dr. Keller once more released Dr. Zakrzewska and permitted her to resume the wide relations which she held outside the Hospital. She was constantly called upon to express her views on the questions regarding women, questions which were more and more appealing to the increasing number of medical women as well as to the community at large. She responded to these calls both in speech and in writing.

Realizing how much the interior arrangements of the new buildings were due to the advice and planning of the medical women, it was a great satisfaction to her that in the following year (1876) at the Centennial International Exhibition held in Philadelphia, the plans and elevations of the new buildings of the Hospital, together with photographic interior views of the wards, etc., were exhibited in the names of the architects, Messrs. Cummings and Sears, and received an award for “well-studied design securing economy of service, good distribution of various parts for ventilation and cheerful accommodation.”

Also that at the Centennial, a history and description of the Hospital was displayed in the Massachusetts Exhibit in the Department of Education and Science, and in the Woman’s Department.

In 1877 Mrs. Cheney writes to her from Europe:

All that I have seen and heard of the work of medical education for women in Europe has deepened my sense of the importance of our Hospital work. It is known in every circle that I have entered where there is any interest in woman’s progress, and in England and Scotland and Germany they look to us for encouragement and help.

There was a great improvement in the financial condition of the Hospital during this year (1877); and among other items in the treasurer’s report occurs the following which speaks for itself as an interesting commentary on the policy developed by Dr. Zakrzewska in the Hospital, as we have already seen it developed in her private practice:

The executors of the late Mr. Augustus Hemenway devoted to us the liberal sum of fifteen thousand dollars from the sum left by his will to charities not promoting pauperism.