Question of escort in night practice—Expansion of Hospital by purchase of four houses on Warren (Warrenton) and Pleasant streets—Professional recognition slowly growing—She buys a horse and buggy—For first time in America the name of a woman is listed officially as specializing in surgery, Dr. Anita E. Tyng being appointed assistant surgeon—Resignation of the consulting surgeon (Dr. Samuel Cabot) and the attending surgeon (Dr. Horatio R. Storer), the latter the only man ever appointed on the attending staff—Dr. Cabot continues to act unofficially. (1863-1866.)
Boston had already extended itself in all directions into suburbs which still kept their dependence upon the center, but the means of communication remained primitive, as already described in the out-patient work which Dr. Zakrzewska established at the New England Female Medical College. And the isolation was most complete at night, the hour when the cry of suffering humanity rings most insistent.
So the Doctor was obliged to walk long distances to answer the calls of those patients who could not afford to send a carriage for her. Her familiar itinerary was from Roxbury to South Boston, to Dorchester, to West Roxbury, to Brookline, to Cambridge, and so around the circle. Temperatures of all degrees from below zero to up in the nineties were never allowed to discourage her.
As in New York, she was unmolested in her travels. But she never took unnecessary risks. She always went with the messenger who called her, and who was generally a man. She writes:
If he could not accompany me on my return home in the night, and no accommodation for me was possible in the little apartment, I walked with the policeman, and waited at the end of the different beats for the next one to take me to his limits. I was well known among them, and was not at all surprised when a Franklin Park policeman recently accosted me as a friend well remembered in the night walks of former years.
The second year (1863-1864) of the existence of the New England Hospital, and of this phase of Dr. Zakrzewska’s life, was marked by such increased growth of the institution that it was decided to purchase the former residence of Rev. Charles F. Barnard, No. 14 Warren Street (later Warrenton Street), to add to it three small dwelling houses in its rear (Nos. 13, 15, 17 Pleasant Street), and to connect them by a covered passage. The large house was described as “well built and convenient, airy and sunny, with a pleasant outlook on the Chapel yard and greenhouse” (p. 331). It seemed prudent to continue to lease two of the Pleasant Street houses to tenants but even so the increase in accommodations was marked.
The result of this expansion [says Dr. Zakrzewska] was enabling us not only to enlarge our work, but also to divide it into three distinct departments—Hospital for medical and surgical cases; Lying-in Department and Dispensary.
Had our work not been wanted [she continues], had our help not been needed, here and throughout the country, we should not have found so many patients asking for help and advice; nor have had so long a list of names of students waiting for a vacancy; nor have met with that response from the community which provided the means for carrying on our institution and enabling us to enlarge it.
Professional recognition was slowly growing, but even slight advances helped to lighten the almost overpowering mental strain of isolation. In such conditions, every slight word or act of indorsement, even though with reservations, was like a ray of hope that at last the dawn was breaking.
Referring to this period of professional loneliness, Dr. Zakrzewska writes in a letter to the editor in 1900:
In looking over these reports, there come back to me the many hours of fear and anxiety when I really was the only person who stood before the world responsible for our work in the Hospital.
The few brave men who supported my efforts were advanced in years and had a large practice; they were often not available for consultation when requested to come, or they came too late, when the danger was over or had ended in death.
My co-workers were young and inexperienced, looking up to me for wisdom and instruction, while the public in general watched with scrupulous zeal in order to stand ready for condemnation; this zeal being stimulated by the profession at large who wanted to find fault but did not dare to do so openly so long as the two or three professional men stood as a moral force behind me.
I remember how twice—once in New York and once in Boston—a man colleague told me I was foolish to take to heart the death of a patient which I saw coming as a natural event. Such consolations helped to uphold me.