WOMEN'S WAR HOSPITALS

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2581, 1 October 1915, Page 3

WOMEN'S WAR HOSPITALS

Some interesting details concerning hospitals staffed by women have been given lately by an Australian paper, especially fliose organised by the_ Scottish branch of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies. Particulars are given of the work of women doctors in Franco and Serbia, and it claims that even the British War Office has been converted to their merits by what has occurred abroad. Dr. Garrett Anderson and Dr. Flora Murray now rank as majors, in the- British Army, and run a hospital in London, staffed by women, for 550 British soldiers. The services of Dr. Alice Hutchison and her unite, en route for Serbia, were requisitioned at Malta bj; the Governor for temporary service to our own wounded. The first medical work undertaken was by Dr. Alice Hutchison, who was asked to take charge of a typhoid annexe for Belgian soldiers. The invitation came from Dr. Dopage, the great Belgian surgeon, whose wife, returning from America with Red Cross funds, was lost in the Lusitania. Dr. Hutchison willingly took charge, and in a short time was known .to have the smallest percentage of deaths from typhoid of any'hospital in Calais.' _She had been through a cholcra epidemic in India, and served also in a former Balkan war. The work of the Royanmont Hospital so impressed the French Red Cross authorities that' it. was suggested that a swrand hospital should be started under the Game auspices nearer the front. The equipping of the unit was forthcoming through the efforts of Girton and Newnham Colleges. Four hospitals have been established, b.v the Scottish women's organisation in Serbia, where the work is the most strenuous and terrible of all. When the Serbian unit left Malta, Lord Methuen wrote a letter of thanks which contained the following appreciation: "It is not in my power to express my gratitude for the help given me by the Serbian unit. They leave here blessed by myself, surgeons, nurses, and riafients alike, for they have proved themselves most capable and untiring workers, and they have never, made the smallest difficulty,"