HISTORY 135F

Infectious and Epidemic Disease in History

Department of History
University of California, Irvine
 Instructor:    Dr. Barbara J. Becker

Week 9.  Cleanliness? Influenza Vignettes by Mary E. Westphal, Assistant Superintendent, Visiting Nurse Association of Chicago

Chicago Because of bad housing conditions and over-crowding, we were very hard hit on the west side of Chicago, and are still (Nov. 8, 1918) getting calls where entire families are ill.  Dirty streets, dirty alleys and just as dirty houses, and lack of proper sleeping quarters have made our work more than usually difficult. The Ghetto was a hotbed of influenza and pneumonia.  We carried it for a few days and then turned it over to the city Tuberculosis Nurses who took this large, congested area as one of the five sections in which they carried influenza and pneumonia cases.  District 8, or as we know it better, "Hull House District," helped us wonderfully, supplying warm gowns, baby clothes, bed linen when needed, soup and other foods for families that could not provide it for themselves.  Miss [Jane] Addams came in to our sub-station daily to see if there was not something more that she or the other residents of the Settlement could do. The houses in this area are very close together and many families live under one roof.  The people watched at their doors and windows, beckoning for the nurse to come in.  One day a nurse who started out with fifteen patients to see saw nearly fifty before night.  In District 28, where the streets are narrow and the people many, sixty-five calls were made in one day, though of course not all by one nurse.  Fourteen calls in a busy season is a fair average for this small district.  The Visiting Nurse repeatedly started out in the morning with a definite list of calls in her hand, but sometimes before getting out of her first case, she was surrounded by people asking her to go with them to see other patients.  Physicians could not get around to all of the people needing them, it was impossible to get orders, consequently the nurse had to try to be many things to all people. At first the gowns and masks which all of the nurses wore frightened the people, and several times women helpers who had come in to stay left the homes on seeing the nurses so dressed up.  Gradually they became accustomed to them and in many homes we trained the husband, or wife, or whoever was supplementing our care to the sick, to wear the gowns and masks. On one of the coldest, rainiest days which we had, the nurse met on the sidewalk in front of a home, an eight-year-old boy, barefooted and in his nightdress.  She quickly saw that he was delirious and coaxing him back into the house, she found the father sitting beside the stove, his head in his hands, two children in one bed, the mother and a two-weeks-old baby in another.  She questioned the man, who was nearly crazed because, as he told her, he had just given his sick wife, a pneumonia patient, a spoonful of camphorated oil instead of castor oil.  He had been up night and day caring for the wife and children, all with temperatures above 104, and his temperature at that time was 101.6.  The nurse sent for the doctor, administered to the woman, bathed all of the patients, and sent the youngest child to the hospital, where he died a few days later.  Several days afterwards, while the nurse was in the home, the mother had a severe hemorrhage from the ear.  When we returned for our second call that same day we found that the patient, between our two visits, had been to the cemetery to see the child buried.  With the exception of the one child, all in this family recovered.... Of course amusing things happened, and the people offered all sorts of inducements to the nurses to stay.  One distracted husband could not understand what kind of nurse one of our staff was, that she would not stay with his family.  He finally said, "Do you work by the day or by the job?" Everyone tried to help us.  A taxi in which I was hurrying to Rush sub-station one noon, was stopped by a motorcycle policeman, who said we were exceeding the speed limit.  When the driver told him that he had a nurse in there, the policeman replied, "A nurse?  All right, shoot" and we surely did almost that until we reached the sub-station.