It was in Tampa, while these nurses were impatiently awaiting transportation to the front, that the sudden outbreak of typhoid fever in the camp there gave the first important occasion for their services. Four nurses, under the charge of Mrs. E.B. Freer, were assigned to the Division Hospital at Picnic Island, and continued their work until about July 27, when the sick men were removed and the island abandoned as a camp. The services of Mrs. Freer’s party were then desired by Colonel O’Reilly, chief surgeon of the Fourth Army Corps, and she was asked on Saturday, July 30, to superintend the opening of a new military hospital in West Tampa. Authority and funds were, on application to the auxiliary in New York, telegraphed her accordingly, and the effectiveness of the compliance with the chief surgeon’s request will appear when it is said that by evening of the next day (Sunday) a three-story brick building was selected for the hospital, thoroughly cleaned, equipped with cots and other necessary hospital appliances, and the cots themselves occupied by fifty soldiers suffering from typhoid and malarial fevers. The spirit of this auspicious beginning guided the conduct of the hospital until its last patient had been discharged on October 14. Five hundred soldiers, chiefly typhoid patients, were treated during those ten weeks, and only eleven deaths occurred. Even a modern city hospital might be proud of such a record.
Meanwhile the constant efforts of the auxiliary to send nurses to Cuba were thwarted by the appearance of yellow fever in Santiago. Notwithstanding our repeated offers, the government adhered to its determination to permit none but immune nurses at the front, and the extension of the auxiliary’s work seemed to be hopelessly checked. The situation with which we were confronted was most serious. We had sought and collected over $60,000 in money, and notwithstanding the great amount of suffering, and our conviction that if only permitted to do so we might relieve so much of it, we were nearly helpless. Happily, a speedy and most gratifying solution of the problem was found in the following manner: The Executive Board of the Relief Committee decided to send a committee representing itself and this auxiliary to Washington, to reach some positive understanding with the President and the surgeon-general of the army regarding the regular employment of our nurses.
On the evening of July 15, this committee, consisting of Mr. Howard Townsend, Mrs. Whitelaw Reid and Mrs. Winthrop Cowdin, was accorded a private interview at the White House by President McKinley, who listened with kindly attention to a brief explanation of the aims and purposes of the auxiliary, and expressed himself as entirely in sympathy with them. At his request, a conference at the White House between the committee, the Secretary of War and the surgeon-general was arranged for the following morning. That same evening the committee called also upon the adjutant-general, and was assured of his co-operation in their efforts. Owing doubtless to the limited time at the disposal of the surgeon-general, who was on his way to meet the hospital ship “Olivette” on its first journey North with a load of wounded from Santiago, no definite results were reached at the conference the next morning. The Secretary of War, however, said he would aid us to the extent of his power, and the surgeon-general promised another interview with the same committee at Mrs. Reid’s house in New York, Sunday afternoon, July 17. The result of this interview is thus stated in a letter from General Sternberg to Mrs. Reid:
I take pleasure in confirming by letter the arrangements made at our interview in New York on the 17th instant.
I am quite willing to employ female nurses vouched for by yourself as secretary of the Red Cross Society for Maintenance of Trained Nurses. I had previously made very satisfactory arrangements for the employment of trained female nurses through a committee of the Daughters of the American Revolution. As I said to you during our interview, I recognize the value of trained female nurses in general hospitals, and we expect to make use of their services to such an extent as seems to be desirable. But I do not approve of sending female nurses with troops in the field or to camps of instruction. It is the intention to transfer the seriously sick men from our field hospitals to the general hospitals as soon as practicable; and we wish our enlisted men of the Hospital Corps to take care of the sick in the Division Field hospitals and in camps of instruction, so that they may be fully prepared to perform the same duties when the troops are in active operations.
Among these privates of the Hospital Corps who constitute the Red Cross organization of the regular military service, and who are non-combatants in accordance with the terms of the Geneva Convention, we have many medical students and even graduates in medicine.
I have made an exception with reference to sending female nurses to Cuba in view of the outbreak of yellow fever in Santiago, and am now sending immune nurses, both male and female, for duty at the yellow fever hospitals. In accordance with our agreement, you are authorized to send ten female trained nurses, selected by yourself, to the Leiter Hospital at Camp Thomas, Ga.; ten to the U.S. General Hospital at Fort Monroe, Va.; and two to the hospital at Fort Wadsworth, N.Y., the understanding being that those at Fort Monroe and at Fort Wadsworth shall be boarded and lodged outside of the hospital.
Thanking you very sincerely for your earnest efforts in behalf of our sick and wounded soldiers, I am, etc.
This letter was accompanied by an order for twenty nurses to be sent at once to the hospitals in the city of Charleston.
As a result of this permission of the government, three men nurses were sent on July 21 to the Marine Hospital at Staten Island, and Miss Marjorie Henshall went with three women nurses to the Post Hospital at Fort Wadsworth, where a number of sick and wounded officers had just been landed from the “Olivette.” An example of the immediate benefit resulting from the increased powers of the auxiliary may be found in the case of one of the lieutenants in the regular army, who had been ill with fever for weeks in Santiago without proper care, and who had reached New York in an almost dying condition. The surgeons in charge attributed his recovery to the timely arrival of the nurses under Miss Henshall.