Medics On the Roof

When I look at these three photos I assume that the men are doctors and the women are nurses.  That's not necessarily true.  American medical schools have been graduating women, in much smaller numbers than today, since the nineteenth century.  I'm not 100% sure, but I think the tall building in the bottom picture is New York Presbyterian Hospital.

More Nurses

When did nurses stop wearing those funny caps?  When did they stop wearing the starched white uniforms? Well, that's one of the things about collecting old photographs.  If I hadn't picked up these four images, I would have never wondered why.

The first nurses were Catholic nuns.  With the rise of protestant denominations and the missionary movement, other sects got into the act and started teaching young women the basics of medicine.  And then, along came Florence Nightingale.  I've made the point in past posts that, contrary to modern opinion, women did work before World War 2 and feminism.  They worked as farm laborers, servants, and with the industrial revolution, factory hands.  It was upper class women that didn't work.  Nightingale was an exception.  From a wealthy English family, Florence Nightingale felt a calling from God to minister to the sick, so she sought out training and then lead a group of other like minded women to nursing during the Crimean War.  After the war, she decided that nurses needed formal education, and that only respectable women should enter the profession.  In 1860, at St. Thomas Hospital in London, she started the first secular nursing school.  And since it was a profession, she demanded that her graduates wear a uniform.  The first caps were modeled after nun's habits and were intended to do no more than keep hair in place, but as time went by, designs changed.  In some American nursing schools, distinct caps were designed for the exclusive use of their graduates.

Anyway, from what I've been able to find out, the practice of traditional caps and uniforms began to die out in the 1980s.  There wasn't anything significant about the changing tradition.   Scrubs were cheaper, more comfortable, and easier to clean.

No names or dates on the photos, though forties or fifties, I think, would be a good guess.  It looks like our nurse had visiting family, and after they headed back home, she and her friends broke out the gallon jug of Gallo wine and had a party.

Happy Birthday From the Nurse's Dorm

I don't know where this photograph was taken, but I do know when it was printed.  Stamped on the back, "THIS IS A Kodacolor Print MADE ONLY BY KODAK WEEK OF JUNE 1 - 57"  But what's going on?  Going by this young ladies age,  my guess is that she's a nursing student, she's in her dorm room, and her classmates have thrown her a birthday party.

The Nurses of 1954

Interesting story in last Sunday's Los Angeles Times.  A woman goes into a Long Beach hospital for a CT scan of her abdomen and pelvis.  The bill, $6,707.  Her insurance company pays $4,371, leaving her on the hook for $2,336.  Good deal?  Had she paid cash, and not involved her insurance company, the total bill would have been $1,054.  So, if you're lucky enough to have health insurance, (I don't.) but unlucky enough to have a high deductible, ask about paying cash.  It may be cheaper.

Written on the back of the top photo, "Surgery staff, Feb. 1954."  On the second picture, "Spring 1954 Nursery SJGH, Frances Albee, Norma, Mrs. Juanitas."  Picked these up in California, so best guess, San Jose General Hospital.

Lunatics

Allright, we've a got a couple of medical types, and seven other men in some sort of uniform.  They might be soldiers, convicts or staff.  I like to think they're lunatics at an asylum.  I've had a few of those in my family.

Nurses and Nazis

Well, there is a certain amount of guess work on this one, so if anyone wants to make a correction, feel free to leave a comment.

This photo was printed on Agfa Lupex paper, manufactured with an identifying logo, in Germany, from 1935 through the end of the war.  With it's German origins, I decided to start a search of web sites, looking for images of German uniforms, from the period.  And did those Germans love their uniforms!  It seems that everyone from school children to politicians were in some sort of outfit with brass buttons, epaulets and braid.  My best guess is that the two men in this image are wearing SS uniforms.  The man with the soup spoon, the general field uniform of the Waffen-SS, and the other man in the Waffen -SS uniform of the protection squad.  Since the SS had it's own hospitals, it would make sense that these two men, even though they would be from different units, would be at the same place, hanging out with the pretty nurses.

The SS was formed in 1920 as the saal-schutz, as hall protection.  Basically, they protected speakers from attack at party meetings, and beat the crap out of any hecklers that might show up.   Under the command of Heinrich Himmler from 1929-1945, the organization became the Schutzstaffel, the protection squad or defence corps,  providing security for party meetings and personnel.. During the war, the SS fielded military divisions, fighting along side the regular army, but not under it's command.  And of course, the SS had responsibility for carrying out the final solution.  For those who don't know what that means, the final solution was the  elimination of Jews and other threats to race purity.  It's quite possible that the two men in this photograph are war criminals, a nice phrase for genocidal mass murderer.

The famous black uniform with the death's head logo, often seen in movies, was the uniform of the Allgemeine-SS, the political arm of the group.  The SS, unlike the SA, and the regular military, took an oath of allegiance to Hitler, rather than to the German state.  A sorry example of humanity.

Nurses In Action

Take a close look at the woman on the right. It took my best magnifying glass to make out the Caduceus and words, "National Nurses" behind her. But National Nurses what? I typed National Nurses A.U. into Google and up came articles about nursing in Australia. Not very helpful. My best guess would be Ambulance Unit, and while that's just a guess, it's one that makes sense. Nurses have always been on the front lines of wars and national disasters. In many cases beating doctors into the fray. Today, nurses are at the forefront for patient's rights and leading the fight for national health care. Perhaps we need a Nurse General rather than a Surgeon General.