CHAPTER XII
EMERGENCY HOSPITALS
GIVEN WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT THE IMPACT OF THE EXPLOSION, the reported 9000 injuries seems reasonable. It is impossible to state with certainty that this figure is accurate. No one was keeping count at the first-aid stations or in the physicians’ offices, and we have only estimates for the number of people treated at the hospitals. Further, none of those numbers account for the wounded who decided to forgo medical treatment—as happens in many disasters, perhaps because they felt others were in greater need.
The statistics are better for people admitted to some kind of health-care facility. On 6 December 1917, Halifax hospitals took in at least 3000 patients, even though they had only 1160 beds. At least 500 more were admitted elsewhere. For example, 50 injured were cared for at the School for the Blind; 100 at the YMCA; 100 at Imperial Oil, in Dartmouth; 54 on the American ship Old Colony; and 250 who were taken by train to Truro, where they were admitted to emergency hospitals there. On that basis, there were at least 3500 people admitted to some kind of health-care facility the day of the explosion. (There were another 250 beds in tents in the Commons, but these do not appear to have been heavily used.)
But these raw statistics are somewhat misleading, given the compromised condition of the facilities that were taking patients in. First, they omit that the explosion hit all existing hospitals, so the victims admitted to hospitals were often being admitted to one with smashed windows and other damage. Second, they ignore the even more revealing fact that on the day of the explosion, and for several days afterwards, thousands of patients were placed almost anywhere: on floors, under tables, in storerooms, in shared beds. Third, they conceal the reality that many other victims were in places where there was less than adequate treatment, as at shelters like St. Paul’s Hall, or the Knights of Columbus Hall, or at badly damaged Rockhead Hospital. Finally, they omit that even the regular hospitals were short-staffed because so many physicians were unable to abandon the victims crowded into their homes.
Today, most hospitals are required to have, and do have, emergency plans. Those plans state that in the event of an emergency hospitals will cancel elective surgery and outpatient services, and will survey existing patient populations to identify those who can safely be discharged, thus clearing space for the injured. Although there are no records to show whether this happened in Halifax, it seems likely the hospitals cancelled elective surgery. It also seems likely the hospitals concentrated their efforts on the seriously injured, though there were so many seriously injured some would have been left waiting. What the hospitals could not do, however, was discharge patients. There was nowhere to send them—homes in the North End were in ruins. Patients not from Halifax could not be sent home either—train service was erratic at best. The exception was Camp Hill, where the convalescent soldiers left the hospital and found somewhere else to stay so their beds could be freed for the seriously injured. In the other hospitals, the numerous injured were squeezed in beside the existing patients.
Faced with what seemed like an impossible situation, the medical community decided there was only one solution. Some of the injured had to be moved from Halifax to communities not affected by the explosion—250 injured had already gone by train to Truro. Surely, once the trains started running, hundreds more could be shipped elsewhere? This was discussed over the weekend and plans to move some patients were approved. When the situation was reviewed Monday morning, however, the idea of a mass evacuation was dropped. The situation had changed dramatically.
The first reason for the change was that many badly injured victims did not survive more than a few hours. Camp Hill recorded 22 deaths the first night and 35 before the end of the weekend; 17 of the 54 on Old Colony died in one afternoon; and 12 among the 250 taken to Truro died within 24 hours. Although other figures are not available, it is reasonable to estimate that at least five per cent of the 3700 in hospitals and shelters did not survive the weekend. That would be at least 180 deaths. Second, there were some adjustments. Old Colony, for example, moved its critically injured patients to the Victoria General, but, on the other hand, saw its patient load increase from 54 to 150. Third and most important, the arrival of American physicians, nurses, and medical supplies allowed the shelters to be properly staffed and new emergency hospitals to be created. This substantially increased the number of properly serviced hospital beds available. By Monday, 10 December—four days after the explosion—there were another 471 new beds in emergency hospitals in Halifax.
Add to those the beds on Old Colony the beds in emergency hospitals in Truro and the beds on the Commons, and Halifax had doubled its real bed capacity from 1160 to 2331. By Monday, some patients had been discharged and more had died, so bed availability probably came close to meeting the demand.
Still, statistics don’t tell the whole story. Even though the arrival of the Americans made possible the creation of emergency hospitals in Halifax, it left the pre-existing Halifax hospitals with the fewest resources and the most seriously injured patients. During the first twenty-four hours, the physicians, nurses, and other volunteers arriving in Halifax from nearby Canadian communities did whatever they were asked to do. They had come to help and felt that those already there knew what was needed. This meant, for the most part, that they helped staff the pre-existing hospitals. The Americans were different. They came to help, but they also came, quite literally, to wave the American flag. On 18 November, for example, less than two weeks after the explosion, an American in Halifax wrote a friend about the American takeover: “It would stir your blood old boy if you could come down Spring Garden Road and see the Stars and Stripes of Old Glory waving over … Bellevue, that old house where the British general always lived.” More significant, the Americans came because they thought they knew better than the Canadians how to manage a disaster. This was revealed in the medical response when the Americans insisted on staffing and managing their own hospitals. As will be seen later, it was also revealed when the Americans persuaded the Canadians to change the way relief was being handled.
FIGURE 12.1 | On the day of the explosion, Halifax hospitals took in at least 3000 patients, though they had only 1160 beds. Emergency relief hospitals, like this one in the YMCA on Barrington Street, staffed by Canadians and Americans, helped absorb the demand. Nova Scotia Archives. W.G. MacLaughlan, 1917 or 1918; NSA, Lola Henry accession no. 1979-237 no. 8 / negative: N-7024.
EVACUATIONS CONSIDERED
The first reduction in the patient load in Halifax came because of the trainload of injured taken to Truro. The railway did this on its own and without consulting the medical community. In fact, none of the medical people involved—Avery DeWitt, his father, or his sister—was in Halifax when the explosion occurred. However, when those running the medical response heard about the train to Truro, they realized that more medical evacuations might help solve their problems. The idea was reinforced by the fact that communities throughout the Maritimes were offering to take victims and look after them. The Nova Scotia community of Parrsboro said it could take 50 or more, Pictou 40, Antigonish 25, and Louisburg 30. Sydney said it could take care of 50 serious cases and 50 ambulatory. Truro was willing to accept another 100, and also offered to take 200 homeless. Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, said it could handle 400. Sackville, New Brunswick, said it could handle 50. Two American physicians, C.C. Hubley and C.C. Smith, proposed to move 20 patients to nearby Chester, where Smith planned to turn his mother’s home into a temporary hospital.
There were a couple of attempts to evacuate more victims by train. The first took place the day of the explosion, when the train from Kentville stood by for several hours and then left empty. The second was put together by the response team from New Glasgow, and eventually it somewhat succeeded. Most injured, however, remained in Halifax, partly because that is what they wanted to do, and partly because the Americans made that possible.
The idea of shipping people to New Glasgow came up when members of that town’s response team were on their way to Halifax. At Truro, they learned that a trainload of injured had been brought there. Perhaps they could help the same way? Their leader was Thomas Cantley, who had made a fortune in munitions. When the New Glasgow special train arrived in Halifax Thursday evening, Cantley immediately went to City Hall. Early the next day, he called on Major-General Benson, Lieutenant-Colonel Bell, the senior Canadian army medical officer, and C.A. Hayes, the general manager of the Intercolonial Railway. He wanted their approval and their help in taking a trainload of injured to New Glasgow. Benson said it was fine with him if Lieutenant-Colonel Bell agreed. Bell said to go ahead. Hayes said he would provide a special train. Cantley wired the mayor of New Glasgow, who wired back to say New Glasgow could look after 100 patients at the new West Side school. Others could be sent on to Antigonish.
Everything went so well that before noon the day after the explosion the railway had moved a five-car special to the south side along the tracks it had just opened. The train was to leave Halifax that afternoon and would reach New Glasgow late that evening: “Every effort was then made by the Military authorities to transfer patients … and a number were actually transferred. Then the storm which had been growing in intensity through the day, toward mid-afternoon became so severe as to seriously interfere with motor transport, and by six or seven o’clock in the evening all transport was impossible, and the attempt to complete the loading of the train was given up and some of the patients returned to hospital.” Saturday morning, it was worse. The streets were blocked with abandoned motor cars and lorries. Cantley wired New Glasgow and Antigonish asking everyone to stand by. That wire never got through. In Antigonish, volunteers waited for victims who never arrived:
Arrangements practically complete, the committee patiently awaited the arrival of the wounded. Nothing definite could be ascertained with regard to the train. To the main inquiries, the local railway people could only say the train had not left Truro yet. Again from New Glasgow came communications with respect to the wounded. We were informed that 75 would be our patients. The message was a welcome one. All night long, the transportation committee awaited the train bringing our expected wounded, waited until 9:30 the next morning, when a train arrived with only three wounded children … forwarded … to the care of relatives. The non-arrival of the wounded was a disappointment to us all. We wished to share in the work of caring for them. It was particularly disappointing to the good sisters of St. Francis Xavier College who had prepared 55 beds.
Though the snowstorm forced that train to be cancelled, Cantley did not give up. He went back to New Glasgow for meetings with the mayor and civic officials. Then he returned to Halifax using the local superintendent’s private car, still insisting that New Glasgow should receive some victims. At 3 p.m. Tuesday, 100 hours after the explosion, another New Glasgow special was assembled. The patients were loaded onto the train by Duncan Gillis and a crew from Stellarton, who were in Halifax to clear away the debris in the North End station. The private car was joined to the rear of the train as committee headquarters and as a buffet. During the trip, it would provide coffee, food, and hot-water bottles for the patients.
The evacuees on that train included children like Ida Malay, three, Robert Noble, eight, Cyril Blackburn, nine, and Clarence Ross, eight—all survivors from the orphanage on Barrington Street—and a few Halifax residents who had agreed to move. There were also twelve sailors: James Aitken, Frederick Deanne, Richard Grafton, Edgar Jarvis, and Albert Waite, all off Picton; Oscar Amburj and Ingual Johannsen, off IMO; Lucas DeSilva and George Lee, off Middleham Castle; David Currie and William Ransome, off Calonne; and Charles Ridley, off Patrol Vessel 1. There were five soldiers from the Wellington Barracks: two sergeants, Frederick Doyle and R.W. Gregory, and three privates, Albert Hill, John Shields, and Felix Muise. Because the Army had lost track of them, Muise and Hill had been reported dead. They had been on board Old Colony. When headquarters wired for details of their deaths, Halifax replied: “Private Albert Hill … not dead, only slightly injured, and now at convalescent Hospital, New Glasgow.”
When the train reached New Glasgow, volunteers met it and the patients were efficiently transferred to the newly created hospital at the West Side school. It had taken just twenty-four hours to move out the desks and other school furniture, create wards, and supply the building with 160 beds, an operating room with four tables, a dispensary, new adult-size toilets, baths, a new kitchen, and a dining room. There was also a resident staff supervised by Miss E.E. Sinclair, and a housing staff supervised by Mrs. Ada Carmichael. The work was done by volunteers from New Glasgow, Trenton, Stellarton, and Westville. It opened Friday night when several patients were shipped from Truro, even though the train from Halifax did not make it.
Reportedly there was one other evacuation, but little is known about it. In 1974, the Halifax Chronicle Herald ran a story about Fred Kidd, who was thirteen years old at the time of the explosion. After having his wounds sutured, Kidd ended up at Presbyterian College. A few days later, he and other children were taken to Campbellton, New Brunswick. Two days after Christmas, Kidd recalled, the children were told they were being assigned to various families, but he protested. He told his benefactors his parents were alive and that he was going home. He said the other children agreed with him. Kidd was right to protest. His mother, found buried in the wreckage of her home, was pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital. But she proved far from dead—she lived to eighty-three years of age.
There were discussions about other evacuations. Lieutenant-Colonel Bell, for example, told Sydney to stand by: “Will wire you late as to hospital and any other accommodation required, giving you ample notice before sending any patients.” But no other evacuation was seriously contemplated. One other plan that failed was the idea of putting the injured in tents on the Commons. The tents, all of which had stoves, were quite warm and reasonably comfortable—and they were ready by 9 p.m. the day of the explosion. However, they sat largely empty, which Bell blamed on the snowstorm: “Unfortunately though this cot hospital was complete and very comfortable, no patients could be induced to enter it. The patients were stunned and refused to be transferred into the tents at night. The frightful blizzard that occurred that night was largely responsible for this and with two feet of snow around the tents on the following day and a gale howling, it was practically impossible to utilize this hospital.”
In fact, the storm did not start until the next morning. The tents remained empty because the victims did not want to sleep in tents. The hospitals were damaged, but to those who had just been blown up they seemed safer than a canvas tent. The problem was not weather, rather it was perception. Some patients did use the tents, however. Howard Glube said three days after the explosion his brother found his mother in a tent. Since evacuations had not worked and survivors did not want to stay in tents, some other option had to be found. The Halifax Relief Committee turned to the Americans.
AMERICANS ARRIVE
The first American medical unit arrived from Boston Saturday morning, forty-eight hours after the explosion. It was the Massachusetts State Guard, directed by Major Harold J. Giddings, and it included twelve surgeons, ten nurses, and hospital furnishings. On arrival, Giddings announced that he had staff and equipment: all he needed was a building. The relief committee had anticipated that request: the day before, it had decided to offer Bellevue. Bellevue had once been the private home of the officer commanding the military district and was now an officers residence. Giddings immediately accepted and within forty-eight hours Bellevue had more than 150 patients:
At 11 a.m., the officers were ordered out, and the engineers started work repairing the building, the windows and doors of which were shattered. The Army Medical Corps orderlies [Canadians] and about twenty Jackies [sailors] from the American ship, “Old Colony,” worked with the nurses and doctors to clean and equip the building. All stores were drawn and in place and at 9 p.m. the same evening i.e. ten hours from the commencement of the work of repair, the hospital completely equipped from kitchen to operating room, stocked with food and medicines, was handed over to the Massachusetts Unit as a hospital ready for patients.
The next day, while Giddings’s group was admitting its first patients, the twenty-four-person team from Maine arrived. At first, the Maine physicians looked after house calls. Then they were offered Halifax Ladies’ College as an emergency hospital. Unfortunately, the windows were broken and the water system damaged and it would take forty-eight hours to fix up. The kitchen, however, was undamaged. General Presson said that the Maine physicians would make the necessary repairs themselves. While the physicians were unloading supplies, they were told that the Reconstruction Committee would provide 125 workmen to turn the building into a hospital.
This building had been partially unroofed and its windows blown out, but … carpenters, masons, plumbers, electricians and materials were obtained and with the assistance of a detail of soldiers the snow was removed from the rooms and the building put in shape for occupants. Seven wards with a total of 200 beds, a dental room, emergency dressing room, dispensary room and operating room were established and patients admitted within 22 hours…. Canadian nurses were available for the hospital.
By Monday, the college had 200 beds, though it never took in that many patients. While there were thirteen physicians with the Maine unit, it was short of nurses. Twenty-five were supplied by the Canadian Army Medical Corps. That same day two more groups arrived from Boston—Dr. E.A. Codman from a private hospital, and the American Red Cross Unit directed by Dr. W.E. Ladd and Samuel Woolcott. Codman brought with him ten physicians and six nurses. He was assigned to the YMCA, where there were 120 beds. It was already a working hospital with a well-organized volunteer staff and an experienced head nurse. After Codman’s arrival, however, the YMCA took in a few additional patients from the Victoria General, Camp Hill, and the Halifax Infirmary. Ladd and Woolcott had twenty-one physicians and sixty-eight nurses. They took over St. Mary’s College, creating another 150-bed hospital. Three of St. Mary’s brothers—Joseph Culhane, Barnabas Cornelia, and Dominic McCarthy—stayed to assist. The remaining brothers left for two months, as did the students.
Overall, then, the arrival of the Americans gave Halifax three new hospitals: Bellevue, the Ladies’ College, and St. Mary’s, and it provided staff for the YMCA, which meant 612 additional beds were now properly staffed. To those running the medical aspects of the response, that seemed enough. When the medical team from Rhode Island wired from Truro Sunday night, informing the city that it had another fifty-six physicians and fifty-three nurses, Lieutenant-Colonel Bell wired back that Halifax had all the medical help it needed. Undaunted, Major G. de N. Hough kept firing off one telegram after another. After he assured Bell that his unit had its own supplies and its own sleeping cars and could look after themselves, they were finally allowed to continue. They arrived at 12:30 a.m. Monday, forty hours after leaving Providence. One other smaller group arrived from Calais, Maine, directed by Dr. William Miner and Rev. R.A. Macdonald. It never got involved with the hospitals, but it did assist at the two main dressing stations.
There is no question that the Americans had a sincere interest in Halifax. When news of the explosion reached Boston, there were long lines at the telegraph office of people trying to find out about their families. It was the same throughout the New England states. This reflects that in the ten years prior to the explosion, more than 700,000 Canadians had moved south. By 1920, the US census showed that 1.8 million Americans had at least one Canadian parent. This is why many Americans had only one thought when news of the explosion reached them: What had happened to their mother or father or brother or sister? That was especially true in Boston, where Canadians were the largest immigrant group after the Irish. Often the news that did come was devastating. A woman in Ayer, Massachusetts, lost thirteen relatives: her mother and father, three sisters, and eight of her sisters’ children. A woman in Providence, Rhode Island, lost four family members: her sister-in-law, two nieces, and a nephew.
The American links to Halifax were not just relatives left behind. There were children attending colleges, such as Mount St. Vincent. There were business connections: commercial travellers were always going back and forth on the Boston Express. Even after the US entered the war, in 1917, Americans continued to head north to join the Canadian army. In a three-week period a month prior to the explosion, sixteen Americans joined the Canadian army in Halifax. One came from California, another from Seattle, a third from Minnesota. Two others were from Chicago. The largest group came from the eastern seaboard, including three from Massachusetts. The strong American response to Halifax was partly because of the family ties and partly because of a genuine concern for a distressed neighbour. Even in faraway Chicago, the manager of the west National Bank raised $43,000. He not only remembered that Halifax had sent money to Chicago at the time of the 1871 Great Chicago Fire, he had lived in Halifax for a time.
But the Americans had not come just to assist. They had come to assist in their own way—an approach that admittedly had some merit. In the case of the medical teams, it meant that the new American arrivals were working with people with whom they were familiar, something research shows works better than when physicians are mixed with strangers.
There was a major disadvantage, however. While some patients were moved to these new hospitals, they were not the most seriously injured. The seriously injured stayed where they were. With few exceptions, the American physicians worked only at their own new hospitals. The existing hospitals, with the most seriously injured, were staffed almost entirely by Canadians: local physicians and physicians who had arrived from nearby communities the day of the explosion. In other words, the Canadian physicians were left with the most critical cases, the Canadian hospitals were overcrowded and short-staffed, and the staff was worn out.
BELL IN CHARGE
Although Lieutenant-Colonel Weatherbe ran the medical relief committee until Sunday afternoon, Lieutenant-Colonel Bell was involved in many of the decisions. It was Weatherbe’s decision, for example, to use Bellevue as an emergency hospital, but it was Bell who got that decision approved by the Canadian army.
It is difficult at times to sort out who made what decisions, even after an examination of the documents. Bell makes it sound as if he was in charge right from the start. In part, this was because one of Weatherbe’s assistants, Captain T.J. Byrne, was from the Canadian Army Medical Corps and thus subordinate to Bell. Byrne made certain that Bell was kept informed, and Byrne’s reports went to Ottawa under Bell’s name. The evidence that Weatherbe was still running things on Sunday comes from Dr. Codman, who described how he came to take over the YMCA: “At the suggestion of Dr. Macdougall [one of the surgeons] … I came to the YMCA building and, finding medical service was needed, applied to Colonel Weatherbe at City Hall for authority to take charge there. I accordingly went to the YMCA and, since then, have continued to direct the hospital without further written authority.” Possibly it was Weatherbe who approved Codman’s move into the YMCA because it was already an operating hospital. However, it was Bell who let the Rhode Island team enter Halifax, though he had nothing for them to do. And it was Bell who approved the use of St. Mary’s because, by the time that was done, Weatherbe was no longer involved. Bell himself reported that he was running the hospitals right from the start, but he also said there was no medical committee until Sunday. The first part of that statement may be true. The second was not.
FIGURE 12.2 | Senior Canadian Army Medical Corps officer in Halifax, Lieutenant-Colonel F. McKelvey Bell, coordinated the entire medical response: “Hundreds are disfigured for life with ghastly scars.” Nova Scotia Archives. Gauvin & Gentzel, 1918; NSA, Ernest J. Gillis, accession no. 1992-50 / negative: N-7142.
Halifax started with fifty-two local civilian doctors, eighty-three civilian nurses, and, from the Canadian Army Medical Corps, thirty-seven physicians and fifty-five nursing sisters. By Sunday evening, 9 December, about 145 additional physicians had arrived in Halifax, including sixty-two with the expeditions from the United States, fifty-seven civilian doctors from other parts of Nova Scotia, and twenty-eight Canadian army medical officers. They were accompanied by some 230 nurses, including around 100 in the units from the United States, and, from the Maritimes, Quebec, and Ontario, twelve Canadian army nursing sisters and as many as 125 civilian nurses.13 Already on the morning of Friday, 7 December, Bell had wired to Ottawa that things were well in hand with the medical personnel who had arrived and those he knew were en route:
All hospitals filled to overflowing with wounded (stop) Interior Pier 2 Hospital Clearing Depot destroyed and useless (stop) Rockhead hospital temporarily useless (stop) All other hospitals working well (stop) Every living man or woman being cared for (stop) Have brought in all available physicians, surgeons and nurses from outlying towns (stop) Plenty of medical supplies except antitetanic and antistreptococcic sera (stop) Can you send two eye specialists from Montreal (stop) Approximate one thousand wounded in Military hospitals (stop) All going as well as can be expected (stop)
A further message on Sunday evening, after the influx of medical people during the weekend, was more pointed: “Please stop any more doctors or nurses from coming unless by special request from me stop Supply already in excess of demand stop Medical situation well under control.”
Arrivals on Monday, 10 December, included the large unit from Rhode Island with fifty-six physicians and fifty-three nurses, and seven more Canadian army medical officers, including Captain Frederick Tooke and Lieutenant J. Rosenbaum, the eye specialists from Montreal whom Bell had requested. Bell had also asked for fifty additional nursing sisters, and all but a few of them reached Halifax from Montreal, Kingston, Toronto, and London on 11–13 December. With these arrivals, according to the report of the medical relief committee, a total of 336 physicians and 459 nurses had been committed to the relief effort. On Christmas Eve, Bell, at the bottom of a letter to headquarters in Ottawa that detailed his successful efforts to reduce the relief medical personnel (to 163 nurses and 47 doctors), scribbled a postscript: “Please note … that hundreds of nurses & doctors were sent to us by kind but overzealous towns & organizations for several days caused us almost as much trouble & inconvenience as our patients.” These comments probably reflect that Bell was preoccupied with treating patients the day of the explosion and did not know how useful the first arrivals had been. By the time he got involved in administration, there were more physicians than needed. This was not true the afternoon of the explosion.
There is evidence of clashes between Lieutenant-Colonel Bell and the physicians who came from out of town that first day. In the novel he wrote immediately after the explosion, Bell includes the following scene:
The Commanding Officer of the hospital was hastening along the main hall and as he passed the entrance he was accosted by a physician, valise in hand, who had just arrived in town.
“There wasn’t any motor car to meet me,” he complained.
“No motor car to meet you!” the O.C. returned with a puzzled look. “How dreadful!”
“I mean,” blustered the new arrival, “I had to walk all the way from the train and carry this valise.”
“Good heavens!” said the O.C. satirically, “we’re getting careless about the conventions. You must forgive us. We’re a little upset today.”
He started to go away but the new comer stopped him.
“Well,” he complained, “now that I am here where am I to go?”
The O.C. looked at him a moment in withering contempt.
“You may go to h–––,” he said coolly as he walked off, “and don’t return until we send for you.”
THE CANVASS
On Monday, 10 December, Lieutenant-Colonel Bell had the Rhode Island unit in the city and had to find something for them to do. He remembered that the head of the Boston medical unit, Major Harold Giddings, had complained that many people were not being treated:
As a result of observations made on the 8th by various members of this unit, who had visited many people in their homes, we were able to suggest the mapping of the city into districts, with the recommendation that a house to house canvas be made first by social workers, who would report as to whether medical or surgical help was needed, the case then to be seen by a doctor or a nurse. This suggestion was made because our doctors found that large numbers of injured people requiring surgical aid had sought the shelter of buildings near the devastated area, where they were content to stay. So dazed were they by the disaster that they did not realize that help would come to them for the asking. Also the members of our staff had found that many people could not leave their places of refuge because they had literally lost all their clothes.
Lieutenant-Colonel Bell knew there had been several canvasses and that St. John Ambulance workers were visiting victims doing first aid and notifying the medical relief committee about more serious medical problems. He did not agree with Giddings’s assessment. But he decided to keep the Rhode Islanders busy by having them do the canvass Giddings suggested. They did as asked. Then, perhaps because they knew Bell’s feelings, they turned in a discreet report: “This canvas [sic] was ordered because of the persistent reports that came to Col. Bell that in these districts there were numbers of people seriously injured who had received no medical or surgical attention. We found, however, that, on the contrary, this area had been pretty well cared for; everybody had at least received first aid, and while there were a considerable number of serious eye cases, no case of neglect could be found.”
Whether the canvass was necessary or not, the Rhode Island team was not pleased with its assignment. They came to perform emergency medicine and, instead, were making house calls. In addition, as a Red Cross report noted, the physicians did not like taking direction from relief workers and thought what they were doing “was unbecoming their status as physicians.” Twenty-five of the fifty from Rhode Island left the same night the canvass was done: they were not interested in staying unless they were given something more important to do. As a result of this, the remainder, including all the nurses, were given hospital assignments. Some of them staffed a new hospital at the Waegwoltic Club, which opened 15 December. (It had seventy-five beds at first, but reduced that to fifty to make room for a dining area.) Others replaced physicians from Boston who were now chafing to return home. They had come because of the excitement of doing “real” emergency medicine. Now that they were running hospitals full of convalescent patients, they wanted out.