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.