Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1898-10-18
FEMALE NURSES
Surgeon General stsrnberg States His Att
tuds.
He Opposed Sending Them With
Troops in the Field Engaged
i'm Active Operations.

| Surgeon General Sternberg has written a
| letter to the commission investigating the
| War Department in regard to the employ
| rent OF female nurses during the war with
| Spain. and to his attitude toward the
| American National Red Cross and other
| relief organizations
! 1t has been repeatedly charged in the
| newspapers, says the surgeon general,
that l have refused to accept the assist
| ar &c of the American National Red Cross
| in the care of our sick and wounded SOL
diers, and that, a result of this refusal
| there has been unnecessary suffering. These
Charges are without foundation except
| in so far as 1 have objected to the sending
! of female nurses with troops in the field
engaged in active operations. We have a
Red Cross hospital corps in the army of
enlisted men whose duty it is to render first
AID to the wounded upon the field of battle
%nd to care for the sick in our division
neid hospitals, and 1 have been of the
opinion that female nurses would be an
lncumbrance to troops during active OPP
erat1ons; but so soon serious sickness
developed in our camps and it became
necessary to treat typhoid fever cases in
our held hospitals, l gladly accepted the
services of trained female nurses for the
division field hospitals, and in our general
hospitals We have employed them from the
first. The general testimony from the sur
gee ms in charge of these hospitals has been
that their services have been of great
value Very many of these trained nurses
have been obtained through the kind as
sistance of the Red Cross Society for Main
tenance of Trained Nurses Auxiliary No. 3
and l desire to express my high apprecia-
ton of the valuable services rendered to
the medical department of the army by
TINS organization.
"A committee of the American National
Red Cross Association called upon me in
my ONCE IN Washington some time in adj
vance of the landing of our troops in San
uago, making offer of assistance | re-
ceived them most courteously and advised
them TO use their resources in fitting up
hospital ship, telling them that a hospital
snip was now being fitted up for the use
OF the medical department. but that it was
not at all improbable that an emergency
would arise which would overtax our re-
sources. and that in such an event a hos
pltai ship properly equipped, having
beard a corps of doctors and nurses would
be a most valuable auxiliary.
Furthermore, the American National
Red Cross Association has had full author
ity to send agents and supplies to all our
camps since June ., 1895 and if there has
been suffering for want of needed supplies
they must snare the responsibility with
the medical department of the army for
such suffering.
There has been a great deal of mis-
apprehension with reference to the sup
plies furnished by the government grow
ing out of the fact that medical officers
III INC nave D6en very ready 10 ac-
cept supplies from relief associations which
were freely offered and even urged upon
them rather than to make reCuisition for
them. The volunteer medical officers
pCcially appear to have had a great
lrctance to assume any property respon-
shility; and, as ii was necessary for them
to give receipts for the supplies issued to
them by the government, they preferred,
as a rule, to accept these supplies from re-
lief societies even when they were present
in ample amounts at field supply depot
In the immediate vicinity of their camps.
The agents furnishing these supplies fire.
qUently inferred from the fact that they
were so readily accepted that they could
not have been obtained from the govern
nent. Thus sheets. mosquito bars. cots,
clinical thermometers, and many other
ticles which are upon our supply table,
have been very literally supplied by these
relief associations although it has been
the intention of the medical department
to furnish these and all other articles nee
eSSary for the care of our sick, and there
has been no time since the commencement
of the war when they could not have been
obtained upon a Geographic requsition SEM
to the surgeon general of the army, if,
for any reason, a sufficient supply was not
OH hand a the field supply depot