Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 94, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 April 1918 — An American Woman at Front [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

An American Woman at Front

Descendant of Robert E. Lee Has Famous Hospital in France ::

7 HF publication of statistics I f of all army hospitals shows M ' that an American woman — K Mrs. Zalma Bradley Lee, formerly of Baltimore and New York —operates a hospital having the lowest mortality rate of all the institutions in France. Although the hospital of Mrs. Bradley Lee at Creil is for contagious cases—and nearly every patient is also suffering from a wound or from gas besides—the death rate is only a little more than 3 per cent. Having received the bronze and silver medals of honor for services for la Patrie, Mrs. Bradley Lee has now been proposed for the gold medal and will be decorated with it when she takes possession of her new hospital. French army engineers are building this hospital with a capacity of 500 beds, on the hill just south of this town, which is the principal base and depot of the Army of the North and Centre. > Nearly 5,000 men have passed through Mrs. Bradley Lee’s hospital during the three years she has had it, and the beautiful American woman has been seen at the bedside of eVery one of the hundred-odd men who have died there, ministering to him until the end. Mrs. Bradley Lee is the widow of David Bradley, and a descendant-of Gen. Robert E. Lee. She has lived in France for some years, owning a handsome chateau near Chantilly. At the beginning of the wmr she served as a nurse and assistant on an army automobile carrying a portable X-ray machine.

In those early days of the great struggle the hospital arrangements for wounded had not been organized, and few X-ray machines were available anywhere near the front. So they were taken from hospitals and laboratories in Paris, mounted in big highpowered cars and sent tearing along the front from place to place, where photographs were made of wounded soldier’s. The X-ray ambulance squad to which Mrs. Bradley Lee was attached worked along the Flanders front during the terrible battle of the Yser, when the Germans were trying to break through to the Channel ports, and during the first battle of Ypres, when attempts were made to drive a wedge between the French army and the British expeditionary force. Wounded by Shell Splinter. In November of 1914 Mrs. Bradley Lee was wounded by a shell splinter, just .behind the Yser line, as her Xray automobile convoy was approaching a field hospital, to photograph a number of Belgian, British and French soldiers in whom were fragments of bullets and steel. After Mrs. Bradley Lee was wounded a general order was issued by the allied armies prohibiting women In Red Cross work from going so near the fighting area as to be under fire. Mrs. Bradley Lee’s wound proved only slight, and in January, 1915, she opened her hospital for contagious cases here, only a few miles from her chateau at Chantilly. In the three years that have elapsed. she has not slept once under her own roof, and has only visited her Jome a score of times a year to Inspect it and obtain new outfits of clothing and other necessaries. She has been to Paris only half a doze?i times in the three years, and was then oh business, with the ministry for health. She has not taken a single “day off” since the hospital was opened. Owing to its Importance as a military b.\se and army headquarters, Creil Is one of the hardest towns alotfS the front for any civilian to go Before the war It was the junction point where passengers from England, who had come down by rail

from Calais, could change cars and take through express trains for the Riviera, for Switzerland or for Germany. The great steel bridge across the Oise, which the retreating French blew up in August, 1914, before the battle of the Marne, is still resting in the river bed, and traffic is carried' on by several smaller bridges thrown across the stream by army engineers. Introduced American Methods. "What sort of diseases do we get here?” she repeated in answer to a question; “why, everything from smallpox and typhus down to scarlet fever and measles, with diphtheria and typhoid and bronchitis perhaps the most prevalent. And whatever success I have made of this hospital Is due primarily to the fact that I have used American methods everywhere. I have scandalized the patients and shocked the French doctors, but at the beginning they were kind with me and let me have my way. Since they have seen the results that have followed the application of our American treatment and methods they have been willing for me to do so, and a few of them —a few of the more advanced physicians—have followed my example and have instituted American practices themselves in other hospitals.

“I have had wonderful success with my typhoid cases, using the ice-bag methods instead of the hot bath treatments that they wanted to insist on giving. And I have always specialized on fresh air and cold air, too, except under certain circumstances, and cleanliness everywhere. “No patient has ever used a handkerchief In this, hospital, and no one ever will while I have anything to do with it,” continued Mrs. Bradley Lee. “Science knows that nearly all contagion is spread through the nose and mouth. Well, none of the soldiers here nrc given handkerchiefs or are permitted to wipe their noses or mouths with anything but little squares of gauze which they throw Into closed receptacles immediately after they use them once. “That is one reason why this is the only hospital in all of France in which no member of the staff, no physician, no nurse, nor even an orderly or scrubwoman has ever caught a disease harp; I have never had anything worse than the cold and the sore throat that I have now since I have worked on men suffering with typhus and smallpox, and been with them for days and nights, hour after hour. “There is not another hospital In France that has that record, and I have only-lost one typhoid patient In all these three years, just by strictly following the American method of treatment all the time. Patients Frightened at First. “The poor patients were a little frightened at first; they who have been taught that fresh air means a ‘draught’ and who have never become on too intimate terms with soap and water, especially during cold weather.

“Today I received a Kabyle—a native from the French colonies in northern Africa —and that man finished my collection. I have had a man from every nationality fighting in this war during the last three years. Chiefly my patients have been French, of course, but I have also had a good many Belgians and British, sent down on the main line railroad through Amiens. Then when the Russians were on the front I had a number of them with scarlet'fever. We had Senegalese, the black troops from Central Africa; we had Moors and Algerians, Italians and Roumanians from the foreign legion, a Portuguese aviator, and the chauffeur fori the king of Montenegro. Many Germnn prisoners of war; haveJj<een brought here, and I had an Auspian aviator who was with the Gerinrm flyhig service and had been shot down on this front. Then a Turk w’ho had escaped from n concentration camp was picked up here with diphtheria, and finally a Bulgarian who had smuggled his way

from Greece to Marseilles and had wandered all the way up here. The two Americans who were just released after getting over the mumps were the first Sammies I had. “During the first two years I was here It was mighty exciting, particularly at night, when the German airplanes used to fly over and bombard the town. Recently they have not come very often.” Sister Is German Countess. Mrs. Bradley Lee is a, sister of tho beautiful Mary Lee, who married Count Waldersee, former chief of th» German general staff. She was formerly the intimate friend of the kaiserin, and is rumored to have "taught religion to the kaiser” several years before the w ? ar. Mrs. Bradley Lee often visited her titled sister in Berlin or Altona before the war, and had a large acquaintance in the German “army set,” 1 among which Countess Walderseei moved. The German army under Von Kluck, occupied Chantilly, after Creil and Senlis, during the first w#ks of the war, and a German general and his staff stopped in Mrs. Bradley Lee’* chateau, doing no damage there, although the Rothschild estates and the property of Duchess de Chartres, adjoining were looted by the invaders. This fact, together with the fact that it was known that Mrs. Bradley Lee had a sister married to a German field marshal, caused considerable gossip, and there have been many unfounded rumors current that the beautiful American Woman who has operated the hospital at Creil for so'long had been arrested for giving intelligence to the enemy.

Wounded Poilus recuperating at Mrs. Bradley Lee's hospital. Mrs. Bradley Lee is shown in first row dressed In white Red Cross nurse costume.