Chapter 37 The Pittsburgh Training School for Nurses

Prince Edward Island

After dinner ended, Mrs. Rinehart approached Gilbert.

"Dr. Blythe. Would you very much mind strolling with me in the garden? The incense that our hostess burns is a bit . . . heavy, I daresay. I would like a bit of fresh air."

Gilbert offered Mrs. Rinehart his arm.

As they strolled, Mary Roberts Rinehart said, "I must confess, Dr. Blythe, that I was untruthful about why I summoned you out here. All this talk about the writing craft bored me. You were the only one tonight who showed any interest in my life before my writing. About my life as a nurse."

"I'm flattered," said Gilbert. "From what I've gleamed from my own nurses, I daresay that your training was a bit – rough? Am I correct about this?"

"It was terrible," said Mrs. Rinehart. "The memory hurts me now. I entered my training in 1893. I was seventeen years old. It was the Pittsburgh Training School for Nurses. I was born and raised across the river from Pittsburgh, but this – this was a world so strange. The panic of '93 ruined my father. What choice did I have?"

"Mrs. Rinehart, I confess that I feel the same way sometimes about my medical training," said Gilbert. "I grew up on a farm. My father had been quite ill when I was a boy. We didn't have any money. I had three options: medical school, teach for a pauper's wages, or farm for a pauper's wages. I've gathered that many of my own nurses feel likewise about their lack of choice."

Mrs. Rinehart said, "Don't get me wrong. The hospital itself did not hurt me. It's a fine institution magnificently managed. It wasn't even the hard work. I didn't mind that, even though it destroyed my health and my body. Dr. Blythe, as I said earlier, it was all the tragedy of the world gathered under one roof."

Gilbert nodded.

Mrs. Rinehart continued, "That first night was plain hell. Pardon my language. Nowadays the nurses speak of eight-hour shifts. I do not understand this. Dr. Blythe, the hospital had one hundred and fifth beds. It was staffed with thirty nurses. We were all students. We ran the wards. We ran everything. During our second year of training, a small number of senior students were sent out to private duty. What was paid for them went to the hospital."

She said, "We even followed our dead to the mortuary. It had stained-glass windows. A very isolated room. We bathed the bodies, clothed them in shrouds, covered them with sheets."

"Dr. Blythe, I ran three wards. I also had the emergency ward. All but one of these wards gave no trouble. But Ward D – Ward D was a nightmare. That was the men's medical ward, Dr. Blythe. It included delirious typhoid cases, delirium tremens, and any other sick man. Typhoid was still raging in Pittsburgh that year. The aftermath of the panic that ruined my father filled the wards. There was so much disease! So many ill-nourished bodies. So much unemployment. That winter the break lines wound for blocks around Pittsburgh's streets. Men lay at night on the bare floors of the station. They were brought to us. Some of them tried to kill themselves. Those were the ones dazed with drugs, or with poison, or wet from the river. They were so ragged and filthy. They were so gaunt. The drug cases were very bad."

Gilbert said, "I am a country doctor, but I saw many drug cases during my medical training in Halifax."

Gilbert reflected, as did Mrs. Rinehart. Those who overdosed on narcotics had to be kept awake, then walked about. One of the interns at Mrs. Rinehart's hospital developed his own method. He dipped knotted up towels in ice water, and then beat the patients to keep them awake. Then, with the help of an orderly, he walked them up and down. The room. Some would fall asleep on their feet. The intern applied more ice water and walked the patients some more. The patients lived when they reached the walking stage.

Mrs. Rinehart said, "I kept a small record for many years. It shows that I had eighteen deaths during that time. Several of them were in the emergency ward. When the patient began to sink, I sent for an intern. He would come up in a dressing gown over his pajamas. He would have rumpled hair and heavy eyes. The interns, like the nurses, never had sufficient sleep."

Gilbert said, "That tracks with my medical training. I never had enough sleep. Still don't."

Mrs. Rinehart said, "He would give some orders and go away, and I would be alone. I placed screens about the bed. I spent such time as I could behind them. Sometimes, a night orderly took my place. However, he had an entire floor and private rooms to handle. So, he had little time. Before long, the end would come."

Then Mrs. Rinehart spoke to Dr. Gilbert Blythe about instances when patients amid delirium attempted to escape. About the miners injured in the mines. About the patients brought to her that were beaten, shot, and cut. About the man she nursed after he had killed his wife and then cut his own throat. The man recovered. Then law enforcement took him away to the gallows and hung him for murdering his wife.

Mary Roberts Rinehart had treated the sex workers in the "disorderly houses," as she referred to them. Sometimes the women were drunk. Some were ill. One of the women had calloused feet, and she said that she never wore shoes.

"Dr. Blythe, one day one of the women that they brought in was a college girl. She had taken poison."

Gilbert though back to his memories of his own Anne as a college girl. He grimaced.

Mrs. Rinehart said, "The disorderly houses lived at night. Especially on the holidays. We could hear the noise coming from them. It penetrated the hospital. Sometimes there would be a fight. The men and women were brought to us, cut and bleeding."

She told Gilbert about the holiday night when two women from one of the "disorderly houses" were brought into the Emergency Ward. The women had quarreled and slashed each other with razors. They reconciled and confessed to each other that they were drunk.

"Dr. Blythe, I was still seventeen. It almost broke me."

She continued. "But then I met Dr. Rinehart. I graduated from my nursing training in 1896. I married Dr. Rinehart that same year. And now here we are."

"Here we are," agreed Gilbert. "You're the literary toast of North America."

Mrs. Rinehart said, "Make sure that you don't let your wife hear you say that."

"Oh, I definitely agree," said Gilbert. "I most certainly won't let my wife hear me say that."

Source: Mary Roberts Rinehart's recollections of her nursing training have been paraphrased and quoted from Mary Roberts Rinehart, My Story (New York: Farrar & Rinehart, 1931)