It is important to note that it was also during this year that the first Hospital Social Service work in America was begun. This was organized in connection with the Maternity—Dr. Dimock, Miss Lilian Freeman Clarke, Miss Elizabeth Greene and Miss Mary Parkman coöperating.
And this year was further marked by the opening to the New England Hospital medical women of some of the clinics of the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary.
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.