Hospitals -- North Carolina -- Raleigh

     Saint Agnes Hospital
     The Story of a Hospital, Mary V. Glenton. February 1923 (pamphlet, 14 pgs)

THE STORY OF A HOSPITAL

DR. MARY V. GLENTON
Superintendent, St. Agnes Hospital, Raleigh N. C.

Electronic Information Center, for the Richard B. Harrison Library, Wake County Public Libraries 

The electronic edition is a part of the Richard B. Harrison digitization project, The Lee Collection. 

OCR performed using ScanSoft's TextBridge Pro.
Spell-check and verification made against printed text using Microsoft Word spell check programs. Original misspellings have been preserved.

Fall 1999 
Travis Horton finished scanning (OCR) and proofing.

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No water in the house, except one faucet in the kitchen.

No hot water, but what could be heated on the ward stoves.

Whole house heated by wood.

Two small steamers for sterilizers (the results untrustworthy), formed the operating room equipment—a probationer stationed outside of the operating room door, to hand in hot water when called for, and to empty buckets of used water.

No screens in windows or doors, and flying things innumerable, with wings small and great.

Laundry equipment—three ordinary wash tubs, flat iron heater, and a big iron kettle in the yard for boiling clothes.

Ice only in extreme emergency, and it had to come from town. Automboiles were not invented, and trolleys were still an oddity, and Mr. Hunter’s horse Nellie with a two-wheeled cart had to carry the ice and other things from Raleigh—four miles.

Cool water was brought by hand from the spring to bathe Typhoid patients, and the Nurses carried it. And that was for old-fashioned Typhoid treatment before the days of vaccine. There was no sewerage.

The Office was Reception Room, Doctor’s Living Room, Dining Room, Surgeons’ Dressing Room on operating days, and sometimes the Morgue.

No plumbing anywhere—only earth closets.

No Diet kitchen—the trays kept on a shelf in the kitchen.

No gas for cooking nor for lighting; simply oil lamps.

Not always enough food for patients; nor the proper kind for nurses and staff.

No patients came the first week. The second week a case arrived of Typhoid fever—a man, desperately ill, others followed, thus St. Agnes’ (that was founded as a Hospital for women and children) became a general Hospital at the very beginning. In the first six months, fifteen were cared

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for, two crippled children were helped, but not cured.

In 1900, on Easter Monday, Dr. Catherine P. Hayden, was installed at St. Agnes’ as Resident Physician and Superintendent of Nurses. Miss Ednah H. Wheeler, the Doctor’s friend, came a little later, to look after the housekeeping department, the linen and the creature comforts that lend so much to the daily life. Mrs. Hunter was Superintendent and Treasurer, and a staff had been formed some time before with Dr. Hubert A. Royster as Surgeon-in-Chief, with a head for each of the other departments. These men were called on any hour of the day or night. Very frequently at three or four in the morning one or more of them would be summoned, but they would promptly come, walking through four miles of sticky, glutinous, clinging red mud up to and above their ankles in bad weather. These men still stand just as ready today to give of themselves for any emergency and to respond in season and out of season. The coming and going are easier, to be sure; but the getting out of bed at the wrong time is as hard, yes harder, because of the years of work on the road behind.

But all through the annals we read, "We have been wonderfully blest so far; but the treasury is empty. "We depend upon the daily mail for our support."

St. Augustine’s League pledged ten dollars a month, and a few friends gave five dollars a month.

At the very beginning classes were formed, with lectures and recitations; just as they are being held today. In the summer of 1900 there were four nurses, but two of them were sick all summer.

A paralyzed woman was found in a cabin at Christmas time, with no food and no fire. A baby was brought in from ten miles in the country. There were, as said above, no automobiles, not even a Ford—just mules for transportation; no ambulances—just carts. An elderly woman was badly burned who needed care but, "No money in the treasury." Little Florine, a baby, badly burned, was put on the Little Helpers’ Cot, and her life saved.

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for, two crippled children were helped, but not cured.

• In 1900, on Easter Monday, Dr. Catherine P. Hayden, was installed at St. Agnes’ as Resident Physician and Superintendent of Nurses. Miss Ednah H. Wheeler, the Doctor’s friend, came a little later, to look after the housekeeping department, the linen and the creature comforts that lend so much to the daily life. Mrs. Hunter was Superintendent and Treasurer, and a staff had been formed some time before with Dr. Hubert A. Royster as Surgeon-in-Chief, with a head for each of the other departments. These men were called on any hour of the day or night. Very frequently at three or four in the morning one or more of them would be summoned, but they would promptly come, walking through four miles of sticky, glutinous, clinging red mud up to and above their ankles in bad weather. These men still stand just as ready today to give of themselves for any emergency and to respond in season and out of season. The coming and going are easier, to be sure; but the getting out of bed at the wrong time is as hard, yes harder, because of the years of work on the road behind.

But all through the annals we read, "We have been wonderfully blest so far; but the treasury is empty. "We depend upon the daily mail for our support."

St. Augustine’s League pledged ten dollars a month, and a few friends gave five dollars a month.

At the very beginning classes were formed, with lectures and recitations; just as they are being held today. In the summer of 1900 there were four nurses, but two of them were sick all summer.

A paralyzed woman was found in a cabin at Christmas time, with no food and no fire. A baby was brought in from ten miles in the country. There were, as said above, no automobiles, not even a Ford—just mules for transportation; no ambulances—just carts. An elderly woman was badly burned who needed care but, "No money in the treasury." Little Florine, a baby, badly burned, was put on the Little Helpers’ Cot, and her life saved.

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Surgical Operations were on the regular schedule from the first. We read "A patient came in too ill for operation, but she was kept under treatment for five months before the operation was performed; and the patient gave thanks for her recovery, in the Chapel."

One day two women came to see Dr. Hayden, and, as she says, a picture they were as they stood in the hail when she came down. Women from a plantation down the river, with clean starched dresses, and clean gingham aprons— large ones—and large white sunbonnets, with in which the dark faces beamed with a great kindliness. They said, "We could not come to Mothers’ Meeting on the Mothers’ Donation Day, but we brought our donation today. We have never been in the hospital, none of our kin have even been in this Hospital, but women from down our way have been ailing, and not able to do a day’s work for months and months. And they came here to this Hospital, and then came back to us like their old selves, well and happy. So we are glad to give our donation." One handed out five cents, the other six sweet potatoes, and they had walked eight miles to present them!

"All that childlike love can render.

Of devotion true and tender."

 

Surely these were "Holy Offerings, rich and rare."

An old hack driver came one day to take a patient to the station who was well enough to go home, she was broken hearted at leaving her Hospital friends. The driver looked at her for a minute, and said, "I brings these wimmen, and they cries all the way ‘cause they has to come, and I takes them away, and they cries all the way ‘cause they has to go home."

One day fire broke out and the patients were taken into Taylor Hall, the assembly hall of the School. Then an emergency came in for immediate operation. The Nurses went over to the burned building to get things sterilized and to scrub up. The stove, that was the only means of sterilizing,

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had a hole in the bottom, and would not burn. That was a dilemma, if you please! But Dr. Hayden with the pioneer spirit that would not be outdone, took a large helping of cement that the workmen had just mixed, and repaired the hole. The dressings were sterilized, the operation performed, the patient was carried from the burned building over to Taylor Hall; and she recovered.

And through all and over all came the cry, "Our Treasury is empty, bills are overdue." But the cruse of oil did not fail, nor the barrel of meal grow empty, although meal was about all that could be counted on sometimes. The merchants in Raleigh were very good in those days, when food had to be ordered, and the ability to pay largely a matter of faith. The courage and strength and the ability to do the very best that could be done, with the material in hand, that and faith in the Lord won the day, and enabled St. Agnes to climb to its present height. For three faithful women by dint of hard, earnest work, and lying awake nights to plan and devise ways and means, climbed and finally mounted the Hill Difficulty, and standing on the summit caught the vision, and planned, and collected, and pleaded the Hospital of today.

The present building was completed in 1908. Mrs. Hunter raised every penny of the $40,000 that built it. The stone was quarried on the premises; and Bishop Delaney is very proud of laying the first stone, and the last stone that finished the present St .Agnes.

Then a second fire broke out, and again Taylor Hall was turned temporarily into hospital use, sheets hung down the middle to make Men’s and Women’s wards. But the damages were as far as possible repaired; and brighter days became more and more usual. It seemed as though these pioneers were going to comfortably enjoy themselves in their work and their home after all the years of roughing it; but to her own great disappointment, and to the grief of the community, an increasing deafness caused the Dector to lay asile the work that was so dear to her heart. People still

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Corning lfl today from all parts of the state, speak so beautifully of her. We are frequently hailed thus, "I bin heah befo’. You isn’t the Doctor that was heah then, Doctor Hayden was hea.h then. She sure was a fine woman. Does you know her? Well, well, you do know her. She sure was a fine woman. You doesn’t favor her much, does you? She sure was a fine woman."

Dr. Jennie A. Duncan succeeded Dr. Hayden, taking over in maturity, the child that the others had fostered and nurtured through a very feeble infancy. Mrs. Hunter still remained at the helm as Superintendent and Treasurer; and Miss Wheeler through her neighborhood work was able to follow up the discharged patients.

Dr. Duncan arrived in Raleigh at six o’clock on Sunday morning. At seven o’clock she was in her uniform and on duty. More of the pioneer spirit! The Nurses’ course was extended in Dr. Duncan’s time to three years, and the Nurses took State Board examinations.

The Training School for Nurses had become more than a factor by this time. It was housed in the former Hospital building as soon as the present building became the Hospital, and it at once became the Nurses’ home.

Then America went to war, so did Dr. Duncan. She left here in October, 1917, and by spring was hard at work at Chateau Thierry.

The present incumbent stayed along during the holidays of 1917, and formally took hold of the work the following March, with Mrs. Hunter still at the helm, and Miss Wheeler near at hand to give encouragement, with her splendid knack of always saying the~ right thing in just the right way..

In November, 1919, the founder, Mrs. Hunter, after a devoted and untiring service of twenty-three years, retired and on our shoulders descended the mantle. The following summer, Mrs. Hunter went abroad, and Miss Wheeler went North to remain, and we were left to work out our own salvation as best we might.

Miss Wheeler died very suddenly in November, 1922.

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She is sorely missed in the school and throughout the district. Only today, at the present writing, Martha Major, the cook of the pioneer days, and now eighty years old, came into the dispensary for something for a cold. She said, "I jes’ thinks of old times now all the time, Doctor Hayden, and Mrs. Hunter and Miss Wheeler. Chile, don’t you talk to me about Miss Wheeler, I jes’ can’t stand it. Old faces gone, old faces gone !"

Dr. Royster and his colleagues are very actively with us, and our operating routine and service win the high praise and admiration of all visitors. Visitors are a frequent happening, and all say the same thing. "Your girls work splendidly. Such team-play, and the way they anticipate the operator’s needs! Such perfect quiet, and everybody doing the right thing! You have reason to be proud of the institution."

CONDITIONS IN 1923

But by 1922 the new building of 1908 had gotten pretty badly out of repair. The fire in the first year of residence in this building dried up things so badly, that the walls showed cracks that soon became smiles, which in turn became grins, and we looked rather shabby. "Drives" being the order of the day we decided to make one for $40,000, and carried it through. The full amount was pledged, and three thousand over; but the pledges that were made in haste are paid at leisure. Drives have been on for other objects, and we are waiting. In the meantime., in January, 1923, the walls, the floors, the ceilings have been renovated and we look so much better.

A bas-relief of Mrs. Hunter, the founder of St. Agnes Hospital, and for many years its Superintendent, has been placed in a niche at the entrance to the hospital. At the time of its unveiling early in December addresses were made by Doctors Royster and Plummer, of the hospital staff. The Rev. Mr. Gould said the prayers, and the ceremony ended by the singing of the Doxology.

The Nurses’ Home has been enlarged, or partly so. The

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cold weather is on us and we are bending every effort to close it in. In the spring we hope to put up a much needed addition, for it must be borne in mind that from the first the Hospital has been required to do a steadily increasing work. That will be one story at first, and for the benefit of the men patients. Their quarters have been overcrowded always, and especially for the last year. So much, so that the overflow has been cared for in the Children’s Ward. The men say that they are afraid to get up and walk around, because if they do, we put somebody else in their beds. We have only one private room for men, and only one in the Maternity Ward. We should have at least two. We are ready now for Standardization, or we shall be in a short time. When the addition to the present plant is completed our seventy-five beds will be one hundred. When we are able to put on a second story, we may boast one hundred and twenty, or one hundred and twenty-five.

The Training School that began in the early days has now a wonderful reputation. Dr. Hayden’s hand shows in that still, for she gave such individual oversight that a spirit was established that will always last. The St. Agnes spirit is due to those first hard struggling years, when personal contact meant so much, and when the Doctor and Miss Wheeler lived under the roof with the girls, and were counsellors, companions and friends.

Now we have thirty-six splendid girls, ready to give of themselves at anytime, and glad to do anything that will be of help.

The patients come from all ranks, and from all places. Some from Virginia, many from South Carolina, and of course the greater number from this state. We have clergymen, educators, doctors, business men; and just plain folks. We have the child who swallowed lye, and the child who has played with matches with the usual result—bad burns. Then there are the cases of the "little two-months-old," and the little fat leg hung up in the air while the fracture is uniting; the automobile accident, the railroad accident, and the

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sundry and manifold things that can happen to mankind, yes and to womankind also.

Happy smiling faces greet us always when we make rounds, though the answer to, "How are you," may be, "Just stickin’ together. Honey, just stickin’ together." The little silky haired children are darlings. One of them was going home after a Tonsillectomy, and when we said, "What are we going to do without you," the answer was, "You have whole lots of little chilluns of your own in there." One woman told us that if her husband had any "overfiush" money we might give it to her. Another, we are told, remarked, "I ‘lowed for to went, but the goin’ was so bad, I didn’t come."

The treasury still becomes anemic at certain seasons of the year. The patients pay promptly and well as a rule, but that does not cover everything, and we have days, yes, and nights of the most humiliating of all worries—money. But the cruse of oil is still flowing, and the barrel of meal is not entirely empty, and we haven’t died in the winter yet.

Under date of January 1st, 1923, the report reads:

"The Hospital is full, as usual. We thinned out to a great extent just a couple of days before Christmas, but the very day after patients began to come in, and we can scarcely remember that we had empty beds a week or so ago.

"Christmas with the usual ‘doing for others’ was full of happiness, and with the unclouded happiness that ‘doing for others alone can bring.’

"We had (and still have) several specially nice babies this year, who attended the Christmas Service and the gift distribution intheir cribs.

"All through the days of Christmas-time the thought of Miss Wheeler was with us—in our busiest moments in the background, but in moments of quiet, a real fact. And not only of Miss Wheeler, but Dr. Hayden, the friend and companion of years, and who is bereft of the daily presence, as

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by herself. They were both so thoroughly part and parcel of St. Agnes, and St. Agnes of them.

"With Christmas behind us, we are now facing the New Year with its work and its difficulties, its success, we hope, and whatever else may be in store for us.

"We are facing the usual deficit. Coal bills and others have sent that deficit soaring, and many of our friends mistakenly think that last year’s drive has formed a fountain of perpetual funds that is bubbling up and flowing out without cessation when, alas, the situation is very much the opposite. The payments are coming slowly, and mostly that money has to go to a very different object, and a very definite one—renovation and enlargement. And while the renovation and enlargement may go on as the drive money comes in, the daily living expenses are paid for by the patient’s fees, and gifts from friends. These two moneys, or lack of moneys, are as separate and distinct as are the funds of the army and navy, and are as untouchable one by the other.

"The Hospital receives no missionary apportionment, and, except for what the patients pay, is almost entirely dependent for its maintenance on the generosity of its friends.

"The patients pay wonderfully well, but to quote from a business perodical, ‘There is a whole lot going out, and very little in proportion coming in, in a great majority of hospitals,’ and we belong to that majority.

"You may ask, Why do we belong there? The answer is very simple. We cannot ask nor demand six to eight dollars a day for private rooms; we cannot ask ten dollars for the use of the operating room, with another ten for the anaesthetist. We cannot charge anything like full rates for a special nurse—in fact in many cases the special nurse is with a patient who can scarcely pay ward rates, and a charity patient must needs have a private room in many instances for the sake of the quiet. Our rates are just high

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enough to make the patients feel that they are paying their way; just high enough to come within their own slender means; just high enough to give a dignity to the situation and to keep them from feeling that they are objects of charity. We have our charity patients—many of them—but who is charity and who is pay is never known outside of the office.

"January twenty-first, St. Agnes Day, is, by custom, Donation Day, when we ask our friends to help us to the utmost. Help us so that we may be able to order necessities without that dreadful feeling about incoming bills.

"I hear somebody say, ‘Why are things ordered when there is no money to pay for them?’ When a patient comes for an operation that will restore her to health and happiness, and that will cause the past two or three years to seem like a sick nightmare, can we refuse that operation because the suture material is low, and we fear to incur the expense of a fresh supply, or because the dressing material is scarce, or we are nearly out of ether, and all these must be paid for? Can we refuse to guard against lockjaw in certain accidents because tetanus antitoxin costs so much a dose? We must have the wards and rooms comfortably warm, lest the patients contract pneumonia, yet that warmth means a coal bill. The patients must be fed, also the nurses, and that means food bills, and the coal and the food, and the dressings and the ether are consumed daily, and the first of each month is a day to be lived through.

"St. Agnes’ Day is the day of the year in which we appeal to our friends, the day in which our friends have an opportunity to come forward as our friends. It is our day with you, and your day with us—the one day of the whole year.

"We are always at home to our friends the twentysecond day of January, but any visitors or gifts that come on other days will not be turned away.

"COME, see what we are doing, and how we are doing it, and help us and be with us."

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Mr. Harrison

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