Massachusetts General Hospital School of Nursing - Yearbook (Boston, MA)

Page 21 text:

CHECKS . . . Page 17 in the Ether Film we all have seen. Which of us, because of the worldwide influence of that experiment, would not a little rather attend a class in the Ether Dome than anywhere else, though the seats are as uncomfortable as they were when Dr. Morton told Dr. Warren that his patient was ready. The progress of surgery became so much more rapid with the use of general anesthesia that in 1868 a new Operating Room was erected in a separate building. A year later Dr. J. Collins Warren, sec- ond of the family to distinguish our annals, brought back from abroad re- ports of Lister’s antisepsis, which was at first coldly received by the conservatives but they could not long fail to perceive what this discovery meant in conjunction with anesthesia. In 1888 our present Ward E was built to meet the need for a new Operating Room and ward de- voted exclusively to aseptic surgery, only clean cases being admitted or permitted to remain there. In 1873 begins the history of the Training School, which to student nurses is naturally the most interesting part of the hospital’s history. We are proud to know that ours was the third Night- ingale School in America, following the Bellevue and the New Haven School by only a few months. Though nursing at the M.G.H. never sank to the Sairy Gamp level, the new school soon proved its worth to the most sceptical — the same sceptics, some of them, perhaps, who in the same years were dubious of antisepsis — and then began that sixty-five year period of rapid growth which we, even in three years, have seen with our own eyes. Sometimes when we go off duty having worked so hard that we scarcely know what to do with a few hours of freedom, it does us good to remember that before 1873 nurses who had the benefit of no instruction whatever slept on folding cots between two wards, while within the present year we have realized the objective of an eight hour day in- cluding classes. As we, the graduating class, look for- ward to the practice of our profession, we take special interest in what seems to have been the most significant develop- ment of our training period: the increase of staff nurses to the point where a special educational program has been planned for their benefit. When we were wondering if we should ever wear caps, the staff nurse was a curiosity found on two or three busy wards. Now almost any one of us may look forward to get- ting her first graduate experience in that capacity either in the General, the Baker or the Phillips House. No doubt we may look forward to working in the new building when it opens. As the structure which was so long a dream becomes a reality, may we remember that one su- preme fact in the history of M.G.H. ex- plains the devotion which Dr. Holmes spoke about many decades ago: this, the oldest hospital in New England, has never needed to depend on steel girders nor monel metal for good results and in par- ticular that we, as nurses, work in a house not built with hands.

Page 20 text:

Page 16 VmVWJWJWJV,WW»W . . . CHECKS InR etrospect A S we of the Class of 1939 watch the White Building rise magically beside the old Bulfinch Building, we are reminded that graduation is about to make us part of a great and continuous tradition of over a hundred years of service. The written history of this hospital since Dr. James Jackson and Dr. John C. Warren in 1810 issued their circular letter which appealed for funds to care for the worthy sick and insane and to educate medical students, fills several volumes; the history which is, and forever must be, unwritten would fill many more. Not with any thought of adding to the literature of M. G. H. but because our Yearbook does not seem complete without it, we in- clude the following paragraphs as a memorial. For it is just as true to-day as when Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote it that, This Hospital has always inspired the fervid attachment of those hold- ing any relation to it whatsoever, — whether as citizens, proud of its benevolent services; as pupils, grate- ful for its teachings; or as medical officers, who have put their own work into its comprehensive fields of usefulness. It has universally fos- tered a feeling of affection, such as is cherished for an Alma Mater.” If he were writing in 1939 I am sure Dr. Holmes would have mentioned the student nurse. Slow in getting started like most great undertakings, the cornerstone of the Bulfinch was laid in 1818 and the first patient was admitted in September 1821. Again the continuity of our history is illustrated by the fact that the great architect who designed our first building is an ancestor of a member of the firm which drew the plans for our new building. The mummy from Thebes now kept in the Ether Dome was presented to the hospital in 1823 and was sometimes ex- hibited to raise money for the hospital. In that same year we received our first large benefit from the estate of John McLean, for whom McLean Hospital was later named, and of whom the hospital possesses a Gilbert Stuart portrait. In those early years any outbreak of a communi- cable disease was a great problem because of inadequate means of control. Several times the hospital was closed and fumi- gated because of erysipelas in the wards and it was decided not to admit syphilitic patients, for whom no cure was then known. On October 16, 1846, which might be called the 1492 of M.G.H., ether was here first publicly used for a major sur- gical operation, the story of which has been re-enacted with faithful accuracy

Page 22 text:

Page 18 . ... CHECKS STATUETTE OF FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE M.idc by Hilary Bonham-Carter, cousin of Miss Nightingale and was given to Mrs. Vaughan’s mother, Mrs. Samuel Parkman when she visited Miss Nightingale in 1872. Presented to the Training School in 1929. A lady with a lamp shall stand In the great history of the land, A noble type of good. Heroic womanhood.” Selected from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.