TERRIBLE HOSPITAL CONDITIONS.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume 8, Issue 95, 20 April 1916, Page 6

TERRIBLE HOSPITAL CONDITIONS.

"Since 7 o'clock this morning five of us (nurses) have been trying to lock after 100 typhoid patients. Every man is on the brink of death. It is simply awful to see them suffering and to be able to do nothing to lessen the suffering. When a man is brought from the field he* is dumped into cold water and then placed on staw mattress. Twice a day they are taken up and put into a bath, where twenty use the same bath four times. They are quite naked; no slippers, no towels. They get into bed wet. They either die or get well in a few-days." This is an extract from a letter descriptive of conditions in the hospital Rebeval in Neufchateau, Vosges, written by Miss Irene Manby, an English nurse, to friends in New York. After nursing in war hospitals in France for a year Miss Manby was stricken ill and owes her recovery she says, to Dr. de Bauchet, attached to the American Ambulance Corps. "These men have to live and eat and die like pigs," the letter continues. "Many have been in the trenches for months and have never washed during all that time. All are infectious cases, typhoid, typhus, scarlet fever, diphtheria, etc. I am quite near Nancy; the firing line is about thirty miles away. There are all barracks here—rooms or wards like stables, with stone floors, iron beds, straw mattresses and straw pillows for us all. No chairs at all. One table on which and under which everything goes, milk, brooms, shoes, etc. One tin mug for everything. We try to be careful, but it is imposible to disinfect, because we have not the right things to do the work."