General Fremont desired that every attention should be paid to the wounded soldiers. He visited them frequently, and perceiving that there was much neglect on the part of the attendants, applied to the Sisters of St. Philomena’s School for a sufficient number of them to take charge of the hospital. He promised the Sisters, if they would accept, to leave everything to their management. There was no delay in acceding to this request. Rev. James Francis Burlando, the Superior of the Sisters of Charity, during a visit made to St. Philomena’s School a few months previous had forseen the probability of such an occurrence and given the Sisters directions to guide them in such a case.
The Sisters had the superintendence of everything relating to the sick in the hospital. Some of the soldier attendants at first looked with wonder on the strange dress and appearance of the new nurses, asking them if they were Free Masons. The Sisters were, however, treated with the greatest respect, so much so that not an oath or disrespectful word was heard in the hospital during the three years that they were there.
The hospital was visited every other day by the ladies of the Union Aid Society, who could not help admiring the almost profound silence observed in the wards. They could not understand the influence the Sisters exercised over the patients, both sick and convalescent, who were as submissive as children. The Archbishop of St. Louis, the late Most Rev. P. R. Kenrick, D. D., was pleased when he learned that the Sisters had been asked for at the hospital. The prelate provided a chaplain, who said Mass every morning in the oratory arranged in their apartment. After the Mass the chaplain visited every ward instructing, baptizing and reconciling sinners to God. There were hundreds of baptisms during the time the Sisters were in the hospital, the greatest number of the persons thus baptized dying in the hospital. The institution was closed at the end of the war, and the Sisters returned to their former homes.
Father Burke was one of the priests who did a great deal of work in the hospital, and he bears testimony to the fact that the patients thought there were no persons like the Sisters. They would often say: “Indeed, it was not the doctor that cured us; it was the Sisters.” When returning to their regiment they would say: “Sisters, we may never see you again, but be assured you will be very gratefully remembered.” Others would say: “Sisters, I wish we could do something for you, but you do not seem to want anything; besides, it is not in the power of any poor soldier to make you anything like recompense. All that we can do for you is to fight for you, and that we will do until our last breath.”
They preferred applying to the Sisters in cases where they could do so than to the doctors, and as a result the Sisters had a difficult task in encouraging them to have confidence in the doctors. Every evening the Sisters were accustomed to visit a tent a few yards distant from the hospital, where the badly wounded cases were detained. One night a Sister found a poor man whose hand had been amputated from the wrist, suffering very much, the arm being terribly inflamed. He complained that the doctor had that morning ordered a hot poultice and that he had not received it. The Sister called the nurse and wound-dresser and inquired why the doctor’s orders had not been attended to. They told her that there were no hops in the hospital; that the steward had gone to town that morning before they knew it, and they had no other opportunity of sending to obtain any that day. The Sisters immediately sent across the yard to a bakery and got some hops and had the poultice put on. The poor man was gratified and surprised. “The Sisters,” he said, “find ways and means to relieve everyone, but others who make a profession of the work do not even know how to begin it.”
When a new doctor came to the hospital it was from the patients that he would learn to appreciate the value of the Sisters. When the patients returned to their regiments they would say to their sick companions: “If you go to St. Louis try to get to the House of Refuge Hospital; the Sisters are there and they will soon make you well.” Late one evening a Sister went to see that nothing was wanting for the sick. She found a man suffering from intense pain in his forehead and temples. He had taken cold in camp and the inflammation went to his eyes, so that he became entirely blind. The pain in his forehead was so intense that he thought he could not live until morning. The Sister asked him to let her bind up his forehead with a wide bandage.
“Oh, Sister,” he said, “it is no use. The doctor has been bathing my forehead with spirits of ether and other liquids, and nothing will do me any good. I cannot live until morning; my head is splitting open. But you may do what you like.”
She took a wide bandage which, unknown to him, was saturated in chloroform, bound up his head and left him. Early in the morning she went to ask him how he spent the night. He said: “Oh, Sister, I have rested well; from the moment you put your hands on my forehead I experienced no pain.” He never thought of attributing the relief to the chloroform, because he did not know of it, and the Sister, feeling that in this case ignorance was bliss, did not enlighten him.
The patients had the best of feeling toward the Sisters, and when the medical doctor visited the hospital he would stand in the middle of the ward and tell the patients to whom they owed their comfort, the good order, cleanliness and regularity that reigned there. He told them that all these things came through the Sisters. It is a notable fact that the respect with which they were treated in the beginning never diminished, but went on increasing while the hospital lasted.
Two of the prisoners of war, as the result of a court-martial, were to be executed, but the worthy chaplain who daily attended the prison obtained the pardon of one, while the Sisters obtained that of the other. On one occasion a soldier who was accused of desertion was sentenced to be hanged, and the Sisters attended him until all was over.