Navigating the Heartache WWI Brings
Institutions to house the mentally ill began in the Middle Ages. The word “bedlam” is derived from the nearly 800-year-old Bethlem Royal Hospital, which is still in operation. In the 21st century, unfortunately, there is a stigma about mental illness. One hundred years ago, however, being mentally ill meant more than being judged and stereotyped. …
In the early 20th century, diphtheria was among the top 10 causes of death. Death rates, however, were dropping. An antitoxin was developed in 1890 and was used on patients the following year. It worked by neutralizing the toxins produced by the Corynebacterium diphtheriae bacterium. Sometimes the antitoxin, which was taken from horses, was contaminated…
PBS’s excellent series American Experience has an episode entitled “Murder of a President” about the assassination of James Garfield in 1881. Garfield died of what today would be a survivable bullet wound. The bullet didn’t kill him; it was hemorrhage and massive infection. In fact, it is quite possible his medical care killed him. According…
When it came to pain relief during World War One, the medication of choice was morphine. It was reserved for the most severe injuries as its addictive properties were already well known. So much so that morphine addiction was referred to by the euphemism “soldier’s disease” as far back as the American Civil War. Morphine…
My fictional character Hettie Steward worked at her hometown hospital, Royal Victoria, in the year between finishing nursing school and joining the Canadian Army Medical Corps, Even though the hospital plays a very small role in Angel of Mercy, its history gives us an interesting glimpse into medical care during the first part of the…
The Canadian Army Nursing Corps was part of the Canadian Army Medical Corps (CAMC). It was founded in 1904 and its members served during World War I in France, Belgium and around the Mediterranean. By the time Armistice was declared in 1918, 21,453 nurses, physicians, dentists, ambulance drivers, stretcher bearers and orderlies had served. Of…
The Canadian Army Nursing Service (CANS) plays a pivotal role in my novel Angel of Mercy, yet it is little mentioned in the history of World War One. The CANS was founded in 1901. The first women who enrolled served in the South African (Boer) War. Three years later, the CANS consisted of 25 women. In…
My novel, Angel of Mercy, focuses on Hettie, a young woman serving during the First World War with the Canadian Army Nursing Service. While her experiences are fictional, she and her colleagues are based on the brave nurses who served overseas during nearly five years of war. “In his much-admired book published in 1975,” Baroness…
Hettie Steward, my main character in Angel of Mercy, is a 1913 graduate of the School of Nursing Toronto General Hospital. By the time of her graduation, it was the largest and among the most prestigious nursing schools in Canada. Competition to be accepted into the program was stiff and had been since 1894. Let’s…
Post-traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD) was not a diagnosis during World War I, and psychiatry was a relatively new medical discipline. No one knew how intensely stress affects the mind. Not long after the war began, a new disease — first coined shell shock in 1915 but not in common use until later — began showing…